September 23rd, 1985: Dreary and Dull or the Best of Times

  

Yesterday I was reading my collection of Peanuts comic strips.  On September 23rd, 1985, Marcie says "We are lucky to be living in this point of time." 

 I thought it would be fun to check up on what I was doing on September 23rd, 1985.

September 23rd, 1985 was a Monday.  I was 24 years old.  I had been living in West Hollywood for two months, living in a tiny carriage house (one room, big enough for a bed and a desk, a kitchenette with a microwave but no stove, a bathroom with a shower but no bathtub).  I was working at three part-time jobs but still having money trouble: $100 in the bank, no credit cards, and forget about health insurance!  Plus I'm sure that the landlord was charging me for the utilities for the big house.

On Mondays I left the house at 7:00 to drive 45 minutes down San Vicente and Wilshire to skid row in downtown Los Angeles.   I would have listened to my car radio on the way, but most of the top singles for September 23rd, 1985 don't sound familiar: "Money for Nothing' (Dire Straits), "Cherish" (Kool and the Gang), "Don't Lose My Number" (Phil Collins), "St Elmo's Fire" (Man in Motion):

Play the game, you know you can't quit until it's won

Soldier on, only you can do what must be done

You know in some way you're a lot like me

You're just a prisoner and you're tryin' to break free

 I would park in a $5 per day lot and walk five blocks to the Community Redevelopment Agency, where I had a "permanent temp" job opening and filing resumes from 8{00 to 12:00 pm.  Lunch was probably at a discount pollo place a few blocks away.  I went there every day until I got mad because they wouldn't accept a $10.00 bill.

On Monday afternoons I drove down Grand Avenue to Exposition and the University of Southern California, where I would try to find a free space USC for a horrible seminar in Modern Drama taught by Dr. Moishe Lazar., who was in his 50s but seemed like a cranky, cane-waving grouch.  He assigned Le Roi se Meurt by Ionesco, which makes no sense whatsoever.  I wanted to concentrate in Renaissance Italian; why was I reading Ionesco? 

Afterwards I would drive down Pico to San Vicente,hurrying to get home before the deadly rush hour traffic began.  I would walk to the gym, and then stop into the Different Light Bookstore, where I would be too broke to buy anything.

Dinner would be something microwaved.  

No dates, parties, or cruising on Monday nightss, and on September 23rd, there was nothing good on tv: Hardcastle and McCormick, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, football, and the movie Izzie and Moe.  I may have watched the two-hour Family Ties special where the family visits London, Alex (Michael J. Fox) takes classes at Oxford, and Mallory falls for his roommate (John Moulder-Brown), but I don't remember it.

Or I may have gone to a movie. The nearest theater was Mann's Chinese in Hollywood, which offered discount tickets on Monday nights.  On September 23rd, I would have had a choice of Plenty (a woman during World War II), Smooth Talk (Treat Williams, top photo) turns out to be a killer), and Creator (Peter O'Toole tries to clone his dead wife)

Most likely I stayed in and read my...ugh...Ionesco or a novel.  In 1985, I was still into science fiction, so I may have been reading Ender's Game, about a war between humans and evil insectoid aliens.   I liked Orson Scott Card's books; they all had strong gay subtexts, so I assumed that he was gay in real life.  Only later did I discover that he was actually a raging homophobe.

I would be in bed by 10:00, in order to get up at 6:00 Tuesday morning.

No boyfriends, no dates, no hookups, a terrible job, a terrible class.  Broke.  Nothing on tv.  Nothing on the radio.  

But I was going to bed in West Hollywood.

It was the best of times.