Free Diamond in the Rough by Shawn Colvin Page B

given enough time and alcohol, most of them tried to sleep with me.
    We played several pseudo–country joints in the city, most notably City Limits on Seventh Avenue. I remember other places, like Home and Spaghetti Western, but our main haunts were City Limits, and the Lone Star Cafe. Buddy’s band also played a circuit of bars up through New Paltz and Albany, New York, hazardous undertakings given that we all drank. On Larry’s birthday, in fact, between sets we were all downing kamikazes, which consist of equal parts vodka, triple sec, and lime juice, and in an effort to be one of the guys I confidently offered to drive us all back to the city. At some point during that drive, I lost consciousness, I guess for only a second or so, because when I came to, we were still on the road.
    I wish I could remember a set list from Buddy’s band. I was so drunk. Bud picked out a song for me called “Runnin’ Wild,” and he and I did a duet called “Rock, Salt, and Nails” that he’d done first with Julie and would later record with her. Larry turned me on to a song by his friend Roly Salley, called “Killin’ the Blues.” I did that one, too. And, of course, the “Orange Blossom Special.” Buddy used to call out the set list to us, song by song. He decided on the fly what to play, and he always needed to tell us what key the next song was in—we knew so many that the rest of us would forget, although he never did. Always he would announce each song to us like this: “Okay, ‘Silver Wings’ in the key of G … like a little baby goat.” Or “‘Six Days on the Road’ in E … like a tiny egg.”
    After mooching off each band member for a place to stay over the course of a few weeks, I finally found an apartment in the East Village, a true shithole for two hundred dollars a month on East Third Street between First and Second avenues, known as the Hells Angels block. I was ecstatic to get it. It was a studio in a six-floor walk-up with crumbling plaster, rotting linoleum, a bathtub in the kitchen, sporting the luxury of its own toilet in a little cubicle near the tub. The ceiling literally fell from that cubicle one day and made a nice pile of plaster and drywall inside the toilet bowl, upon which, luckily, I was not sitting at that moment. The apartment was too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter. Water was leaking from the ceiling into my room one day, and I discovered, after knocking on his door, that the guy above me was a hoarder and had stacks of newspapers four feet high everywhere. He had no idea his radiator was leaking, because it was practically impossible to see, let alone get to.

    East Third Street, 1981
    I fell in love with New York. The geeky, neurotic weirdo I’d always felt like began to seem downright normal compared to some of the things I witnessed every day! And I loved the feeling that no matter the time of day or night, New York City was open. The Bay Area always felt too spread out for me to get a grip on, but New York was laid out on a simple grid that made it feel small. No matter what I needed, it was just around the corner. There were the Ukrainian diners where I’d buy a quart of split-pea soup and a loaf of pumpernickel bread and live off that for a week, and the electronics store on the corner was where I bought my first television, a thirteen-inch black-and-white. I didn’t have to sweat not having a car; the subway was all I needed.
    And I met Stokes.
    He just showed up at one of my gigs. I think it was at the Other End. I know there was an introduction, but I don’t remember it. He wasn’t in my life, and then one day he was. Roy Stokes Howell. He was called Stokes. He could talk to anybody about anything. You meet Stokes and he already knows you. Then the next time you see him, you just say, “Well it’s Stokes, of course,” and there you are. He’s your friend.
    Stokes and I are kind of the same person, except that he likes for rooms to be hot and I like them to be