Chapter 1: Inside Paradise

In August, 1977, I had been out of college for a few weeks. Just to have something to do and get a bit of money as I considered my future, I took a job as an usher at the Loew’s Paradise Theater on the Grand Concourse. It was still an imposing old Bronx institution, and the interior had been done it what I’ve heard called a Venetian or an Italian Baroque style. Whatever it was, it was impressive. However, the former 4,000 seat venue from 1929 had been split into a triplex. The former main floor was now divided into two units, and I was assigned to handle both of those.

There wasn’t much to do except be present and keep an eye on things. Between showings, I took a broom and dust-pan and swept out the floors as best I could. These rooms were so big that I had to alternate the clean-up between showings.

I got to see movies as they were released, but then I had to see them over and over again. I tried to block them out, but I could only partially do that. I had never seen a movie as often as the ones that played there. After a few days, I knew every bit of dialogue, every little plot point, and exactly where those were within the film.

At the theater job the only dress requirement was that I wear a sports coat — I only had one — and a tie. I had a flashlight that I could clip onto my belt, and that was about it.

One weekday afternoon I was leaning on a wall halfway down a room, trying not to watch Kentucky Fried Movie. A lot of it reached my consciousness anyway. Whatever had once been funny about the film was long gone. About the only parts I still noticed were the bare tits in “Catholic High School Girls in Trouble” and the segment at the end where a couple had cowgirl-style sex in front of their TV.

Sex was on my mind because I hadn’t had any in about seven weeks. There had been a much longer dry spell the previous year, but this one was somehow bothering me more.

In June, my really cute girlfriend Donna Azzato had broken up with me. The reason for that was mostly my own fault, but that’s a story for another time. As for the other four ladies I had lost, maybe they had gotten bored but mostly they had found older, more successful guys with better prospects than I offered.

It was irksome because I could never see the break-up coming. Everything would be going along fine, and then they would just disappear. I had to go looking for them, and then I would get some vague explanation about how it was “time to move on.” One of them, my first, was AWOL for more than a week. Then I saw her getting out of a car on campus, a Triumph Stag convertible that was being driven by her new boyfriend.

So I was pondering my life on this day and I was also trying to ignore the John Landis movie on the screen. I was suddenly aware of someone, a woman, singing somewhere in the theater. It was in the back of the auditorium, so I headed there to investigate. In the very last row, about three seats in, a girl was sitting there doing a Judy Collins song. She was moderately loud, I’d say, and she was into the second verse already.

“Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels;
the dizzy dancing way that you feel,
as every fairy tale comes real.
I’ve looked at love that way.”

I leaned in and said, “Miss, this is a movie theater. Please don’t sing in here.”

She was immediately argumentative about it, “But take a look; there’s only about five people in here, and they’re all down in the front.”

“I know, but I was about halfway down and I could clearly hear you.”

She put on a frown. From the start I got the feeling that she was putting on an act, being tongue-in-cheek with me. “You really have a stick up your ass about this.”

“It’s my job, among other things, to make sure the other patrons aren’t disturbed.”

There was enough light from the screen for me to make a quick assessment of her. She was young, about my age, and to me she was rather good-looking. Her face was a bit round and on the wide side. Her dark-blonde hair was short by the standards of that era, coming down just beneath her chin.

“Maybe it’s that you don’t like the song.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it. Please, be quiet.”

She gave an overly-dramatic shrug, and I left to patrol the area behind the last row. I had been gone less than twenty seconds when I heard her again.

“Well, you’re slim and you’re weak,
you’ve got the teeth of the hydra upon you.
You’re dirty, sweet and you’re my girl.”

I didn’t realize it for a moment, but this song was aimed for me, or rather it was about how I might be perceiving her. For a second I considered ignoring her, and then I decided she was deliberately bugging me. I couldn’t let this challenge to my meager authority go answered.

I went back to her row, and she gave me a big smile. It seemed genuine, and it disarmed me for a moment.

She said, “So you don’t like T-Rex either.”

“It’s not the song, it’s the fact that you are singing at all in here.”

“But it’s true, I am dirty and sweet.”

I was a bit taken aback. Is this chick flirting with me? She doesn’t know me at all. I took another look at her, and she did look very good. She had an orange shirt that was open to reveal a black halter top underneath. I couldn’t see it clearly, but she also had a black skirt. She wasn’t a petite, dainty girl; she had a nice solidity to her body. She was smiling at me again.

I also was getting the feeling that she was a bit high, maybe more than a bit, on something. It didn’t seem to be alcohol or pot, the only substances that I was familiar with myself. She gave an impression of being lucid and energetic.

I was struck by the idea that I was already losing this encounter, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I repeated myself, “With all due respect miss, you have to be quiet in here.”

She kind of wiggled her head and pouted at me, “And with all due respect, there’s nothing you can do about it.” Before I could respond she said, “Do you like the Rolling Stones? You know what’s a great song?”

I knew I was going to hear part of it.

“I see a red door and I want it painted black.
No colors anymore, I want them to turn black.
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes.
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes.”

She laughed, “That’s us. I’m the girl in the summer clothes and you’re the one with the darkness in your head.”

It was uncanny how she seemed to be reading my mind. It had been just a few weeks since my girlfriend Donna had broken up with me. It had been so recent that I was still mourning the loss.

I tried a different tack, “Are you high on something?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve had a little something to perk me up today.”

I glanced up at the screen to give myself a moment to think. The film was in the middle of the long martial-arts parody, a movie within the movie called A Fistful of Yen. The Chinese warlord, or whatever he was, was saying, take him to Detroit. It was my favorite line in the whole production.

I turned my attention back to the problem at hand. She got the first word in, “What are you going to do? Call the police?”

That would be useless. It wasn’t worth a 911 call, and if I called the 46th Precinct on nearby Ryer Avenue, they would laugh at the idea of a theater usher with a singing patron. This was long before Giuliani time. She did the next two lines of the song.

“I see a line of cars and they’re all painted black,
with flowers and my love, both never to come back.”

She put her left arm over the seatback and smiled at me. It bothered me — no it angered me — that she was not just scoffing at what I had requested, but she also seemed to be taunting me with her sexual power. That’s the way I interpreted it, anyway.

I quietly said, “You’re acting like a little cunt.”

“So you’re thinking of cunts now? You are a very dirty-minded boy,” and she laughed again. She had more to say, “I guess you have a boss here, the theater manager? Talk to him. I’ll deny everything, and I’ll tell him you’ve been harassing me, trying to influence me with your profane talk.”

I felt determined, “I can handle this is in my own way.” Except, I had run out of options.

She leaned forward and said, “What are you going to do? Spank me?”

I heard that well enough, but I still said, “Excuse me?”

“You know what a spanking is. I mean, for a bad, nasty girl like me. You take me over you’re knee and beat my bare ass until it falls off. Except, where are you going to do it? Not here in the row; that will really get the attention of everybody else.”

I knew the answer. As evenly as I could I said, “There’s a room out there, behind this one - a spare office. I’ll take you back there.”

I didn’t realize it yet, but I had her. She said, “I dare you, you don’t have the balls for that.”