When my mother decided to marry him, I knew it was my cue to move out. I guess she thought she had struck it rich marrying this guy because he had a boat in the West Seventy-Ninth Street Boat Basin. But that was where he lived before he crashed into the shack, and trust me, his boat was more tugboat than yacht.
Eventually she ended that abominable marriage. The divorce took multiple years and many lawyer fees, which of course I paid for after the success of my first record. Then the jerk even ended up suing me for the rights to some fictitious Mariah Carey doll (if I had a dollar for every deadbeat who sued me, I’d be … well, it’s been a lot). But I was the polar opposite of rich when I moved out of my mother’s house. I was broke and seventeen years old. It was the late 1980s, and I was living completely on my own in New York City.
Fate is a bizarre thing. When I was about seven, we were living in that cramped apartment on top of the deli, and I used to love to hear the sounds of the radio coming up into our windows. I remember swaying, posing, and singing with Odyssey: “Oh, oh, oh, you’re a native New Yorker / You should know the score by now.” I didn’t know what “knowing the score” was, but I wanted that fabulous New York feeling even back then. It took ten more years, but I had finally arrived.
To me, the city had a raw grit and an impossible chicness. It was in perpetual motion: masses of people walking fast, no one looking the same but all moving in sync. The city was crazy messenger bikes whizzing around and countless long yellow cabs zigzagging through the streets like a swarm of rough bumblebees. Something was happening everywhere you looked—huge billboards, flashing neon signs, wild graffiti emblazoned across all kinds of surfaces, covering subway cars, water towers, and vans. It was like one big, funky moving art gallery. The main avenues were grand, crowded catwalks filled with eclectic fashion models, business moguls, street hustlers, and workers of every ilk, all strutting and with no one studyin’ each other. Everyone had somewhere to go and something to do. It was a mad and fabulous planet of concrete and crystals populated with misfits, magicians, dreamers, and dealers—I landed right in the middle of it. Hello baby, I was made for this.
MAKE IT HAPPEN
After moving out of my mother’s house I crashed at Morgan’s empty apartment on top of Charlie Mom Chinese Cuisine in Greenwich Village, while he was in Italy pursuing a modeling career (and Lord knows what else). I fed his two cats, Ninja and Thompkins, and tried my best to feed myself. The first decision of every day was whether I was going to get a bagel from H&H or buy a subway token.
I was surviving on a dollar a day, and something had to give—it was either breakfast or transportation. H&H bagels were sublime: soft, warm, and plump to perfection, a classic NYC morning staple that would keep my stomach occupied until three o’clock (H&H stood for Helmer and Hector, the two Puerto Rican owners, who arguably made the best kosher bagels in the world). But then again, getting around is pretty important, and the New York City subway was the rowdiest but most direct route to anywhere in town. The token was slightly bigger than a dime, a dirty gold disc with “NYC” stamped in the middle and a distinctive slim Y cutout. This was the people’s coin, and it could get you anywhere, at any time. But if I could walk to where I needed to go, breakfast would win.
I found a job right away. I didn’t have a choice. So I did what every other broke dreamer does when they get to New York City. I grabbed the free newspaper of real New Yorkers, the Village Voice, and checked out the job ads. I took what I could get—and what I got was work at a sports bar on Seventy-Seventh and Broadway, cleverly named Sports on Broadway.
I began as a waitress, but as management soon discovered, I was still a teen and couldn’t legally serve drinks, so I was moved to the cash register. Boy, was that a disaster. I was a hard worker, but I had spent most of my working time in a recording studio, and working a register isn’t like recording background vocals. I wasn’t picking it up fast. And this was a neighborhood joint with regulars and no-nonsense waitresses, like “Kiss My Grits” Flo in Alice but New York tough. Those broads hated me for messing up their money!
Eventually, I got moved to the coat check. Simple. But while I was hustling, I was also getting hustled: I wasn’t allowed to keep my tips, which is pretty much the entire allure of being a coat-check girl. I got a dollar for every coat. I knew it wasn’t fair, but I also knew it was temporary. When summertime came around, the coat check was converted into a merchandise booth, and I became the “Sports on Broadway” T-shirt girl. The booth was right at the front door, so the first thing the men would see was me with a welcoming smile, in a white T-shirt with the word “Sports” printed across my boobs. I was grateful for the simplicity of it all: the uniform was the bar’s T-shirt and jeans, and since I only had one pair of jeans, it was one less thing for me to struggle to buy.
Not
