[Satan]

Sid was on the loose. Someone stabbed Nancy a week or two prior and Sid was bombing around town. He would come see Judy Nylon at CBGB cuz he was friends with her. We (the Coachmen, the only friends I had) would go to the gig cuz we knew the drummer and the place would be pretty empty. Judy wasn't super popular but she was rad, doing a real slow punky version of "Jailhouse Rock". But fucking Sid would walk in and sit right near us. He was the skinniest. His skin was totally white. And he had the looks and mannerisms that you knew he just had to have. My dream was to start a band with him that would totally kill. He was down and out and I was ready to immerse myself in him. Total punk rock. But I was in an art-rock band. He was into heroin, murder, and weird sex from after-hours hell. When he died it was one of the most intense moments of my life. I watched the TV reports like it was Kennedy being assassinated. I collected and have to this day every newspaper clipping there was (unfortunately there was a newspaper strike in New York which limited the amount of super schlock coverage).

I used to walk the streets looking for pennies so I could save up 200 of them and then go to St. Mark's Cinema (2nd Ave. & 8th - the Gap's there now) and see the second-run double-feature. The audience was a mixture of artist downtowners, East Village Puerto Rican dudes, luminaries (Divine, Richard Hell, etc.) and new-wave loners (myself). The lobby was a cloud of cigarette and pot smoke. I remember Richard Hell sitting down with his then girlfriend Susan Springfield and I got up and sat in front of them as if I was a disheveled poet punk hoping to impress them. I met Richard many years later and he had no recollection of this.