Malba Toast

I LOVED OUR HOUSE IN MALBA!!!!

We had an AWESOME view of the Whitestone Bridge from our backyard, a POOL!!, real swing set, large lawn, huge backdeck, and a great4 BR "ranch" style house.

We had the greatest family holiday parties in that house... Everyone showed up for the huge buffet that took days to prepare by my aunts. Gloria, Rosie and Dottie...
Summers were sort of a good time for me cause we would have the one big pool party, and I be wisked off to the Dominican Rebublic to spend most of the summer in this large house with a set of twin cousins who terrorized me, a older girl cousin who literally took all day to put on make up and sit on the porch at night for the chance that a boy would pass... no one ever passed.. and the alcoholic oldest cousin who was a closet queen "KISS" fanatic, and always called me faggot..
I really wasn't faggy..
He came out recently at the age of 46.
Now he's faggy!!

Good times were had at that house and I still think about it every day.
My best dreams are about that house..

My room (I thought) was the greatest, I can finally got to decorate it the way I wanted to... I ripped out the gross chartruse shag rug to expose the great hardwood floor, which I painted black. I ripped all the paneling off the walls, and scraped that damn popcorn ceiling to a real cool texture. I did this all in one weekend in 1979 while my parent were away on business. When they came back to see a high gloss black floor, battleship grey walls with a GIANT poster of Blondie (I was obsessed) and a warholesque piece I did of 10 large photocopies of the naked William Hurt popping a zit on his back from Rolling Stone Magazine.... THEY WERE FURIOUS.. A quote from my dad I remembered was "if you want to live like an asshole then go ahead" my mom said "it looks like a the spooky house from Adventures Inn" (our local Amusement park). I loved it and so did friends and family of my parents.
SO..
That summer I was shipped to the Dominican Republic to stay at my uncles house again. I HATED THIS!!! I could not relate with no one NO ONE!!!
When I came back that late summer the paneling was put back, and a new rug was laid, and only the Blondie poster was put back up hap hazardly with torn corners.
I was soo upset.
They knew they screwed up..

I demanded an expensive synthesizer.
YAMAHA CS-15

I loved my synth... Loved it soooooo...
So when your parents see you like something what do they do?
Well... take it from you and give it to a cousin in DR... of course
WHY?
Because other people (cousin's) less fortunate than us deserve a synth to use in a country were electricty is never stable...
Because of the electricity situation in the DR, my beloved synth was sizzled within a month.
My parents promised to replace it..
One day I came to to a big suprise...
So I go to the basement and in the corner I see this massive thing covered in a white sheet. So they pull the sheet, and underneath was the UGLIEST Playola Piano, the piano that plays itself with the scrolls.
They pressed a button and I'll never forget that song... "the 59th st song (feeling groovy)"
From the look on my speechless face they could tell I was not happy..
"ungrateful and selfish" I was called
I guess I was?
There was a collection of scrolls.. all these ragtime standards and Frank Sinatra / Dean Martin singalong tunes.
I don't think that the Playola was used more than 10 times.

I save up monies to buy a cheap Casio synth..
I still miss the YAMAHA CS-15!

We lived in Malba til 1983.
We move to a new fresh penthouse apt in Flushing, in the new Chinatown.. we were the only american family in the highrise building on Roosevelt Ave, the Heart of Chinatown... Wisteria Plaza!

I graduated High School in 1983 I was 17, and went to the Manhattan campus of the "New York Institute of Technology"
One month before my 18th birthday my parents had a "BIG" suprise for me...

They had purchahttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifsed a CO-OP for me on foreclosure ($15,000) A nice 1 bedroom in Mitchell Lama in Flushing. A predominantly Jewish retirement complex.
SURPISE!
I felt right at home...
I was an extreme goth at that time...

I WAS NOT READY NOR MATURE ENOUGH TO MOVE OUT!

But there I was on the day of my 18th birthday on a matress on the floor scared shitless, alone. longing for the security of my room I designed in Malba...

I was the youngest person in the Lama complex's in NY state. I was in the Daily News. They took a picture but never published it. I woke up extra early that day to crimp my hair just like of "The Cure"

I was the freak of Mitchell Lama.

I still am!