Over many years, I had written remnants of about a dozen novels, mostly science-fiction and fantasy, but also historical fiction, western and mainstream. My first completed novel was a science fiction novel I wrote during my year at the University of Southern California in 1978. Stephen Longstreet was the professor teaching the course at the graduate level, and the requirement for successful completion of the course was to write a full-length novel—or at least the first draft of one. I recalled the novel entitled, Hellicus, which I even submitted a portion of to Chip Delany at one writer’s conference at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
During my early years in college from 1976-1978, I lived in New York City with my father and stepmother (my parents divorced when I was five). I attended New York City Technical College (known then as NYCCC). I majored not in writing but in commercial art and design. At age 19, I dropped out and enrolled in the Art Students League of New York, studying illustration under Earl Mayan.
For two years I pursued an art career, even seeing a showing of my artwork at the League. I liked the League because the institution was largely run by art students (not academia), and one could pursue any direction of art one wanted. Though much of the galleries showcased fine art, I was bold enough to submit astronomical art and commercial illustration, mostly of science-fiction fantasy books that I liked. I worked with acrylics. I had bought myself an airbrush and was quite adept at using it. During this time, I attended the NY School of Visual Art, taking a book illustration course taught by an illustrator of children’s books.
This was not the class for me and the instructor slammed everything I did. Disillusioned with my direction, I moved back to Los Angeles, inspired by an ad in Writer’s Digest about a course in novel writing taught by Stephen Longstreet at the University of Southern California. Finding work as a wind-screen manufacturer, then as a TV-guide (not the TV-Guide) editor in Burbank, editing TV listings for Canadian newspapers, I stopped writing, occupied with the business of trying to support myself. Unhappy with my pay as an editor, I moved on to driving flat-bed trucks before I enrolled in a truck-driving school, working for a spell as an independent for North American Van Lines. Though I was based in Los Angeles, I was never home, and spent most of the long hauls on the east coast, transporting computer mainframes along the way to/from New Orleans and Boston.
Wearing of driving long hours, I left North American. Without car, and finding no employment, I moved back to New York, taking a sales position, selling children’s books over the telephone, doing surveys, and such. Around this time, I obtained a hack license and drove a yellow cab for three years, fancying myself as another Phillip Glass, who had pushed a hack himself before he became a famous composer. I would meet many quintessential New Yorkers, celebrities, and odd balls (stuff for future blogs). Even Issac Asimov was a passenger of mine, though I had missed a turn on Broadway at Times Square, making him have to walk to Rockefeller Plaza where he went for an interview. I would eventually drive a “black car,” (as the industry called it), working as an independent contractor for a limousine business, shuttling business clients all over the Tri-state area.
My dispatchers called me “the snowman” because I would allow our MTV accounts to snort lines of cocaine in my limo (anything to please a client, right?), an account that would see me meet many hipsters, celebrities, rock bands—even a vampire (“Grandpa” Al Lewis of the Munsters). During the ride over the 59th-Street Bridge, in pouring rain, we mostly talked basketball (Al formerly worked as a basketball scout), but we also got into a discussion about Italian food. Grandpa asked whether I liked eating out in Italian restaurants:
“I hardly ever eat out Italian,” I told him. “My girlfriend was born in Altamura, and made the best Italian dishes in the country, as far as I was concerned.”
“Well, I tell you what,” Grandpa said. “You come down to my restaurant on Bleeker—tell them I sent you—and you’ll taste the best Italian food in all of New York.”
“In all of New York?”
“Guaranteed. Bring your girlfriend. See if she doesn’t agree.”
Skeptical, I took up Grandpa’s challenge. Turns out the restaurant was named Grandpa’s, and was quite elegant and moderately priced. I remember the façade had glass paneling and, below the signage, a pink-and-black neon profile of Grandpa smoking a cigar. And the food was molto delicioso! Chiara agreed (though I liked hers better).
All good things would come to an end. The stock market crashed in 1987, and I struggled for three more years in the industry before I sold out and left New York, moving not back to Los Angeles, but to Tucson, Arizona, where my life would change forever.
To be continued in my next blog.
