Before we time-machine our way back into the 80s, a note about how it’s not lost on me that pulling threads of stories from the past into the here&now is cloaking me with a bit of escapism. I’m appreciating it. That in no way suggests I’m immune to the daily (er, hourly) hits my emotional psyche is taking as we live during this bludgeoning of democratic norms and watch the cruelty that is hammering people down every street and around every corner of the world. The high tension has become a constant buzz in my head. I’m making my 5 calls and figuring out how to read (or listen to) the daily goings-on.

I’m taking these time-travels because, although there are moments I’d enjoy ostriching my head into the sand (a thing they don’t actually do, BTW), the stories remind me that even in the darkest of the Reagan years—the bulk of which I spent as a new arrival in NYC—along with the crises of my new home city’s epidemic of AIDS, crack, and an increasing population of unhoused folx, I can still access the joy and pain of my life back then. In fact, the darkest, most confused of those moments brings with it sharp contours of the beauty in succeeding where I could and did. If I can still find my way to tease out those moments currently, then I’ll try.

So let’s step into some of those way-back moments, shall we?

Last we saw that Cadillac, it was 1997, I was working at Rolling Stone. I’d graduated from SVA with my journalism degree and was having a relationship with someone I really shouldn’t have been having a relationship with. At that moment in time, it was occurring to me how wrong the relationship felt. When I say occurred, that might strike you as a conscious idea that pops fully formed into a brain and then is perhaps explored and acted upon. But that would be wrong in this case. For the purposes of my life at the time, occurred merely meant there was some itch at the base of my brain that made me think I was either in need of another shot of tequila or needed to turn up the music to drown out any semblance of thinking. Ideally doing both at the same time was a quick way to block out that itch. Up to that point, anything involving confrontation was outrageously uncomfortable, and therefore I went to absurd lengths to avoid it. While confrontation is still extremely hard for me, I’ve had a helluva lot more practice and at least realize that causing diversionary commotion (look over there at that exploding tree) while I run the other way and never return is a very unfortunate and damaging way to deal with situations. But back then? Meh … no concept of the extreme silliness and sadness that kind of avoidance brings.

So there I was, working my starter dream job at RS and developing a fierce crush on one of the other employees. He was in a band (natch) and had a girlfriend. I was very deadset on never sleeping with anyone who was involved with someone else, which seems cockamamie given I was currently sleeping with a person who was an ex of a former friend, but somehow I’d justified that because they’d broken up. My thinking around work-crush guy was that if I waited out his relationship by being his very good friend, then maybe someday. Rom-coms are very insidious and I’d seen/read too many. Oh, and also, I decided to become the manager of his band. This was, frankly, an insane move and why they said yes is mysterious. Maybe because I didn’t charge them any money. I’m not sure what they thought I’d achieve given I had zero connections to any club bookers at the time and I hated, despised, had real trouble conversing about business stuff. I’d offered because it would mean I’d spend more time with the band. Suffice to say, for the maybe two months I held this role, I never once booked them at a club. But I did hang out with them almost every night.

And now for the part where everything became much more stupid than it needed to be. The roommate and I were seemingly going along fine, at least that’s what he thought and I didn’t disabuse him of that. One night, when crush-boy’s band was playing at a local club (one that I didn’t book them in), I asked if I could borrow the Cadillac to help them move their stuff back to their rehearsal space after the show. He said yes, with conditions: You can only put stuff in the trunk; please don’t put anything in the backseat. Original upholstery, and all that. And also, please don’t leave the car unattended in Brooklyn. (Where the rehearsal space was. I mean, we lived in a crazy neighborhood but the Cadillac was parked in a gated/locked lot down the street away from sidewalk marauders.) OK, said I, knowing I would break at least a couple of his terms. He went to work at the bar, I went to the club with the wheels. The show was great, the set ended, the bar closed, the equipment was moved out onto the sidewalk, and, naturally, not all of it would fit in the trunk. I hadn’t even told them about the no-backseat rule, so they began to load the balance into the backseat. I’d put a towel down, but still. Everything was packed in tight and we headed off to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which back in 1987-88 was still abandoned factories and empty streets but also upsurging spaces for artists and a fertile hip-hop scene, and where they lived.

We unloaded all the gear with no injury to the Caddie, which was a win that made me feel like now I could relax and have fun. We ended up at the singer’s apartment: a sixth-floor railroad layout that was only two rooms where we drank some things and smoked some stuff. I also shamelessly flirted with the bass player because somehow in my mind I’d decided that since I wouldn’t be able to be in a relationship with the guy I wanted to be with, I could get close by hanging with someone in the band. Relationship by proximity. Oh-mi-gawd all of this was so ill-conceived and current-day Lauren is actually cringing right now. But back then, meh, no thoughts. Night turned into morning. The Cadillac still out on the street in front of the building. Every hour or so I’d step to the window, open it up, and stare down at the thing shimmering in the moonlight, then the upcoming dawn. Phew. I was so proud I hadn’t hurt the car. But wait. I was still completely f&Ckd because it was now morning and I hadn’t called the roommate to say where I was and I had to now go home and face him. Here’s where avoidant-brain set in: Secretly I wanted to do something so bad that he would break up with me so I wouldn’t have to break up with him. See? Banana-pants self-destruction.

I finally got my sh&t together and drove home. I reparked the Caddie in the gated parking lot. I walked the walk of shame back to the apartment, let myself in, and on the table I saw the yellow pages open to hospitals (for those too young to know about phone books, they were giant paperbacks with yellow pages filled with all the phone numbers). The roommate was not there. I stood in the middle of the living room with the dawning realization of just how terrible a situation this was and how I’d manufactured it out of whole cloth all by myself. When the roommate did come back, I might have still been standing frozen in the middle of the floor. He was worried. He’d thought something terrible had happened because why would I intentionally keep the car out all night? Why would I not call him? I wasn’t that kind of person. But, see, I was that kind of person, I’d just kept it hidden from him. And now I had made him worried and sad and confused, not at all mad. And he didn’t break up with me.

I would have to figure out a way to do that on my own. And that part of the story, well, let’s just say that next week, when we visit my new apartment on 12th street between Avenue A and B, the place where I was burgled for the first time, you’ll find me a bit chastened.