All this time Michael Gullage had been living in Provincetown. Sometimes he would come up to Boston for a few days, and sometimes I would take the bus down to Provincetown to stay with him for the weekend. Or, if he was spending the weekend with a new friend, he would leave the keys for me, and I would live in his apartment until Sunday. He had a “really cute” apartment at The Caper Inn in on a hill overlooking the bay.” This was in the fall of 1974, after Baltimore and when I was living in the huge Fenway apartment building.
He would usually leave me a couple of romantic notes along with the keys, such as the one the picture above.
He would usually leave me a couple of romantic notes along with the keys, such as the one the picture above.
This other message was written earlier, when Michael first moved out of our Beacon Hill apartment: “I’ll always know that you are the one who loves me c o m p l e t e l y. I also know that I’ll always be loving you. After all, you have a larger portion of my heart than I do”, a message of love that also gave a glimpse of the low self-regard that plagued Mickey throughout his life. Why should he have to disregard himself to love another?
One day Michael got word that some hairdressing salons in LA were offering cosmetology scholarships that would be supplied by the federal government, with a small but regular scholarship weekly payment. He got really excited, saying that this would be a higher paying and more prestigious job than being a waiter, and so Mike decided to move to LA in early 1975. Since I was thinking of going to a city where there was a jazz course offered in a regular college, (so that it would lead to a M.A. and my dream job of a community college improvisation and music theory position), if New York didn’t work out (where I could live rent free with my parents in my old home town of Westbury), I could join Mickey in LA.
Mickey had done enough waitering work to qualify for unemployment, and this financed his move to LA and kept him going until he got another waiter job – it would take a while to get the scholarship. He also got food stamps and a Med-Cal card. Almost a year after he had moved West his cosmetology scholarship came through! It was for ten months at the Marinello Beauty Academy in North Hollywood. It paid not only the tuition but also some money for food and rent. In his letters Mike said how much he loved Hollywood, the balmy weather, And “sex was so easy to get – both lovely queens and wild stallions.”
A few months after that two of his closest Boston friends moved West to join him, and the three of them found a nice cheap apartment on N. Clark St. in the Central Hollywood area near Grauman’s Chinese Theater, where all the stars hand or footprints are immortalized in cement. (Despite its fame, central Hollywood then was a very low-rent district – the more expensive and classier part of Hollywood was West Hollywood, close to Beverly Hills. But Central Hollywood was where all the cutest guys lived too, and some of the tastiest Mexican and Salvadorian restaurants.)
Their apartment was on the fourth floor of a five story red-brick apartment building. On the left side was a ground parking area of around 15 yards, and then the basement floor of another apartment building. Sounds made in that basement were very audible in Mike’s building It was this set-up that brought Mel’s bongo drumming to my ears when I moved out there to join Mickey. When you think about it, so much was to chance - if either Mel or Mickey had chosen to live in some other apartment building, I never would have met Mel, and Creation City (West) would never have happened, and my career would never have happened.
By this time I had my ‘Knotted Portfolio” experience which decided me to move West (as described in the following chapter). But I couldn’t take the class I needed to get into Cal State Los Angeles until the Sept-May semester had finished, so after meeting Mel on a late summer visit to Mike and his friends, I went back to Westbury to finish the course – as described so thrillingly in the following chapter – and then as soon as I had finished the course my parents bought me a cheap little Volkswagen, and I drove across the U.S., eager to see Mike and his friends and to get some music going with Mel.
One day Michael got word that some hairdressing salons in LA were offering cosmetology scholarships that would be supplied by the federal government, with a small but regular scholarship weekly payment. He got really excited, saying that this would be a higher paying and more prestigious job than being a waiter, and so Mike decided to move to LA in early 1975. Since I was thinking of going to a city where there was a jazz course offered in a regular college, (so that it would lead to a M.A. and my dream job of a community college improvisation and music theory position), if New York didn’t work out (where I could live rent free with my parents in my old home town of Westbury), I could join Mickey in LA.
Mickey had done enough waitering work to qualify for unemployment, and this financed his move to LA and kept him going until he got another waiter job – it would take a while to get the scholarship. He also got food stamps and a Med-Cal card. Almost a year after he had moved West his cosmetology scholarship came through! It was for ten months at the Marinello Beauty Academy in North Hollywood. It paid not only the tuition but also some money for food and rent. In his letters Mike said how much he loved Hollywood, the balmy weather, And “sex was so easy to get – both lovely queens and wild stallions.”
A few months after that two of his closest Boston friends moved West to join him, and the three of them found a nice cheap apartment on N. Clark St. in the Central Hollywood area near Grauman’s Chinese Theater, where all the stars hand or footprints are immortalized in cement. (Despite its fame, central Hollywood then was a very low-rent district – the more expensive and classier part of Hollywood was West Hollywood, close to Beverly Hills. But Central Hollywood was where all the cutest guys lived too, and some of the tastiest Mexican and Salvadorian restaurants.)
Their apartment was on the fourth floor of a five story red-brick apartment building. On the left side was a ground parking area of around 15 yards, and then the basement floor of another apartment building. Sounds made in that basement were very audible in Mike’s building It was this set-up that brought Mel’s bongo drumming to my ears when I moved out there to join Mickey. When you think about it, so much was to chance - if either Mel or Mickey had chosen to live in some other apartment building, I never would have met Mel, and Creation City (West) would never have happened, and my career would never have happened.
By this time I had my ‘Knotted Portfolio” experience which decided me to move West (as described in the following chapter). But I couldn’t take the class I needed to get into Cal State Los Angeles until the Sept-May semester had finished, so after meeting Mel on a late summer visit to Mike and his friends, I went back to Westbury to finish the course – as described so thrillingly in the following chapter – and then as soon as I had finished the course my parents bought me a cheap little Volkswagen, and I drove across the U.S., eager to see Mike and his friends and to get some music going with Mel.
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