At this point, I was still working at Interco, going to therapy, and had graduated from Farmingdale despite the divorce. I was not in the mood to struggle with my studies for a Bachelor's degree. I finally came up for air after a deep dive. I wanted and needed a mental break. At the same time I became lonely and bored. I was not about to plummet hear first into a relationship and just wanted to make some good friends. I wanted to meet women but I wanted to build a good friendship first. The women I was meeting one objective: the perfect kiss and it was not my objective.

I filled my life the way I always had done, with music. The NY Post Progressive Punk Pop Party (5P) was running full tilt and there were alternative dance clubs everywhere. I spent my weekend nights in the night clubs dancing to alternative post punk music. I was old, but not so old that I didn't fit in. I was the upper part of the range yet accepted by my peers. I needed to go out where people were young and alive.

This was a world of surrealism: an escape. To escape the mundane life we all felt being trapped inside of a cubicle 40 hours per week. In the club one could forget about what existed outside in the real world for at least a few hours. It had similarities to the dance contests of the depression era but not as dire. The dance contests of the depression were desperate attempts to survive one more day: a last ditch effort. I once asked an elderly American Indian man at a festival in the Quags of Long Island, "Why do your people dance?" Deep in thought, he looked at me. His silence was deafening as he formed his answer. Piercing me with his eyes, he replied, "Because the dead can't."

In real life, you were just a number, a consumer, a wheel in the cog. In the club, you were a VIP, a star. Friendships were forged around music: whether with the employees of the club or with other patrons. Secret messages were exchanged through the selections made by the DJ or by patrons requests. Without realizing it many were "people watching." The time spent gave me decades of characters, situations, narratives, and poetry to write. I have never been at a loss of something to write reflecting upon that time.

The club scene came at a high cost: the clothes, the record collecting, the search for the "perfect beat" the DJ-ing system at home, the cover costs, the forging and breaking of relationships, the de- and re-contextualizing of sound, and so on. But as I said, it has provided years of stimulation for more explorations in creative non-fiction in mutli-modal exchanges such as "this". Movies such as "After Hours" would have never been created.

We could honestly say, "I've been things and seen places."