My proudest moment: “In recent times I have made the slight acquaintance of a gentleman called Mr. Regan. He is of Irish descent but, unlike the rest of his unruly race, he adores the English. He used to rule a bar called The North Star where from time to time he staged events recalling wartime Britain. At one of these he managed to secure the presence of Millicent Martin He now rules over The Spotty Dog Bar and Unisphere Cocktail Lounge on Eleventh Avenue at 43rd Street, to which he invited me to a Halloween party. I tried to decline because I try never to become involved in occasions of public jollification. It is a long time since I tricked, and I have never treated but I did not offer these facts as excuses. Instead I told him that I couldn’t put on funny clothes, to which he replied, ‘But you’re always wearing funny clothes.’ So I went. “As a special inducement, he sent one of his helpers to collect me from East Third Street. This young man explained to our taxi driver that we were in no especial hurry. He said that, although he didn’t expect to live forever, he would like to survive for the next two hours. His words went unheeded. We careered through the streets, stopping, starting, swerving with alarming violence. However, we arrived at our destination with only our nerves shattered. “The Spotty Dog, completely renewed, opened three weeks ago. It is now a spacious, well-lit restaurant, serving large portions of pleasant food. What kind of clientele will habituate an establishment so far from civilization, I have no idea. On the evening I was there, very few of the customers were recognizable because of their masks and strange costumes. Even the waiter had, perched on his shoulders, a toy rat which squeaked when pressed at the right places. (Who would not?) Mr. Regan wore white painter’s overalls and a bowler hat. How he will appear on subsequent occasions I cannot say, but he’s always a very agreeable host.” Resident Alien: The New York Diaries by Quentin Crisp, 1996. (Excepted from a column written in 1992) amazon/Resident-Alien-Quentin-Crisp/dp/0007292376
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 13:33:27 +0000
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