I was abandoned and alone
Without a penny to my name
So very young and so afraid
No proper shoes upon my feet
Sometimes I couldn’t even eat
I often cried myself to sleep
But still I had to keep on going
—“Make It Happen”
I also only had one pair of shoes, and they were a size and a half too small. They had been my mother’s—pitiful flat black leather lace-up ankle boots. They were basic and utilitarian, and I made them work. At some point, the top of the shoe separated from the rubber sole, creating a flap that would slap the unforgiving city pavement as I pounded toward my destiny. The swelling of my feet from standing all day in too-small shoes surely contributed to their demise. Snowy days were the worst; ice would slide into the flap, melt, and seep through my thin socks, and the clammy sensation of wet, cheap leather traveled up my spine. And that year New York had a big, newsworthy snowstorm! But I’d pull myself together, as cute as I could manage, and flash a smile, pleasantly doing my job and just hoping no one would look down at my feet. I had years of training for living through humiliation, but now, I wasn’t in school; I was living in The City. I believed in my heart that one day I would make it and have some of the most fancy and well-fitting shoes imaginable.
I had my mighty faith, but I was also blessed with so many signs and acts of kindness from folks along the way. Like Charles, the cook at Sports, who would fry me up a greasy cheeseburger and sneak it to me with a glass of Sambuca. It wasn’t glamorous, but I had a meal, an outfit, and a few dollars. Every day that I made it through, I knew I was closer to my dream. I would drop down on my knees each night and thank God for another day when I didn’t give up or get taken down.
I know life can be so tough
And you feel like giving up
But you must be strong
Baby just hold on
You’ll never find the answers if you throw your life away
I used to feel the way you do
Still I had to keep on going.
—“Make It Happen”
The job at the sports bar was a means, but the studio was the end. Everything went into my demo. One day while I was eating downstairs in the Chinese restaurant, gratefully savoring the cheap morsels of the day’s only meal, I noticed a familiar face. It was Clarissa, the now ex-girlfriend of my brother’s producer friend Gavin Christopher. We hugged like old friends. I told her that I had officially relocated to the city. When I gave her the rundown on my chaotic living arrangements, like an angel, she invited me to come live with her.
Though she identified as a “struggling artist,” fortunately for me, Clarissa wasn’t really struggling that hard. She lived with a gay couple in a huge classic Upper West Side brownstone on Eighty-Fifth Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. I suspected that she was one of those kids who had a trust fund waiting for her once she got over her starving-artist phase. My music was my life. Music was the only plan, ever.
While it was certainly an upgrade from my previous crowded crash pad, living with Clarissa still had its challenges. She had a room (with a whole door, which closed) where there was a loft-style bed set up with recording equipment underneath it. Her room was off to the side of the larger parlor room. My situation was a ragtag loftlike structure built above the kitchen in the communal area that we shared with the couple. To get to my sleeping cranny I had to climb up onto the kitchen counter and hoist myself up into the teeny nook. It was barely more than a crawl space and had just enough room for a twin mattress, outfitted with a single pillow and a blanket (a “house” warming gift from my mother). The space was so shallow and the ceiling was so close that I couldn’t fully kneel on the bed without bumping my head (so there, I prayed on my back). It was “decorated” with the only remnants from my life in Long Island: my journals and diaries, my Marilyn Monroe poster, and a handful of books on Marilyn. I still looked up to her.
Connecting with Clarissa proved to be quite the blessing. She helped me find work and covered for me when I couldn’t make my share of the five hundred dollars a month rent—a fortune to me then. Occasionally she’d take me out to eat. We even did some songwriting in her mini studio. She had a few connections in the music scene from her time with Gavin and would sometimes introduce me to other musicians who also lived on the Upper West Side. On these special occasions, she’d even loan me a little black dress to wear (not dissimilar to what I’m wearing on my first album cover). I certainly didn’t have anything of my own that was appropriate for mingling.
Like everything during that time, nothing lasted long. Eventually the addition of some crazy roommates meant that Clarissa and I fled for our lives (I really can’t get into the details of that) and had to move on and out. We joined my friend Josefin (whom I had met when she was in an open relationship with my brother). She was living with a few other girls from Sweden. So it was five random girls living in a random apartment on top of a club called Rascals, on East Fourteenth Street. I was downgraded to a mattress on the floor, but I was now living “downtown,” in the heart of the New York art scene of the late 1980s. It was thrilling, if precarious, and my eyes were always focused upward. I was able to
