Lately, Teen Spirit has been inviting his friends and fellow bandmates to sleep over in the apartment. Smartmom and Hepcat are thrilled. That’s not sarcastic, they really are thrilled — for a variety of reasons.
First off, it’s better than not knowing where he is on a Saturday night and getting worried when he calls from Brooklyn Heights or Union Square at 1 am and says that he’s sleeping over at the house of a friend they’ve never heard of.
And these sleepovers give Smartmom and Hepcat a chance to observe and oversee their son’s recreational behavior and enjoy quality time with him and his friends. With college (hopefully) lurking in the future, Smartmom and Hepcat want to savor every minute they have left with their only son.
These impromptu slumber parties actually make Smartmom a little nostalgic for her lost youth. Buddha knows, she has plenty of memories of that golden time, when she and friends would laugh their heads off watching Gilda Radner, Larraine Newman, Jane Curtin and Chevy Chase on that first season of “Saturday Night Live.” Later, they’d fall asleep in a sea of sleeping bags in the den of her parent’s Riverside Drive apartment.
Ah, to be 16 years old in 1975 in New York City. Smartmom and her friends felt like they were inventing the world of drinking beer and listening to jazz at the West End near Columbia University. It was a time of so many firsts: love, sex, Rosanne Rosannadanna, gin and tonics at the Dublin House on West 79th Street (did every under-age Upper West Sider drink there?).
The future may have been looming in the distant horizon, but she and her friends enjoyed the there and then when it was the here and now.
Like Smartmom, Teen Spirit is soaking in the glory of being a teen in New York City. And like Smartmom, he’s blessed to have a great group of high school friends.
One of them likes to write songs with Teen Spirit in the living room. While the loud guitar playing and emotive singing may annoy their neighbors (Smartmom is sorry), these sessions have more than once resulted in some really good songs.
One evening, Teen Spirit and this friend sang through a long list of Beatles songs complete with rousing vocal harmonies. Smartmom secretly sang along in the kitchen while they sang “Happiness is a Warm Gun.”
Another friend is creative when it comes to seasoning his food. One morning, when Smartmom served him scrambled eggs, he asked if they had any interesting condiments in the fridge.
“Sure,” she said, a tad confused.
After minutes spent in deep exploration, he emerged with a jar of candied ginger and mayonnaise to add to his eggs.
Saturday night, Teen Spirit’s band, Mighty Handful, played a rollicking, frolicking set at Don Hills, a dark, skuzzy club on Spring Street just east of the Ear Inn. Afterwards, Teen Spirit brought home three boys and one girl to sleep over.
It’s all good, of course, but the apartment has begun to feel like the F train at rush hour. And the truncated size of their living room (where Hepcat now makes his office) makes for tight sleeping quarters.
Still, Smartmom grabbed some blankets, their inflatable mattress, sleeping bags and pillows and threw them into the living room.
When she got up the next morning, the living room floor was wall-to-wall kids: two on the couch, two on the rug and one on the hardwood floor without a blanket.
It reminded Smartmom of the time she and five high school friends went to hear a band called Deadly Nightshade at CBGB and afterwards all piled into the apartment of a friend on Central Park West where they all slept, chastely, in the same bed.
“What happened to the Noguchi coffee table?” Smartmom wondered out loud about the kidney shaped glass top table with the collapsible wooden legs.
“Oh, it was really heavy,” one of the kids said. “But we managed to move it over there,” he said pointing to a space right next to Hepcat’s desk
Hepcat will love that, Smartmom thought.
Smartmom remembers that freedom of being a teen. Sure, there were these obligatory grownups around, but the only people that really mattered were her friends. The world revolved around them and there was no one else she wanted to be around.
Teen Spirit feels the same way. It’s a time of intensity and discovery. And moving the coffee table if you need room to sleep.
O, to be 16 in New York!
It’s perfect for Teen Spirit, but you couldn’t pay Smartmom to sleep on a hardwood floor these days; her cozy bed suits her just fine, thank you very much.
