Pissing in the Ocean in a Rainstorm at High Tide: Song #91. ‘77 /17

"[You] creep me out...it was thirty years ago ...get over it" – Nancy H

'77 /17
It was fucking easy being green
And there, proudly on the movie screen
The rock and roll transvestite queen
Midnight lips
My first kiss
Susan Saradon’s lovely tits
John and Paul, Glen, Sid and Steve
Our brand new Elvis stops the TV
Harry Reems gets out of jail
William Jefferson Clinton still don’t inhale
But she let me put my fingers there
Then she slipped off her underwear
'77 /17
A couple hundred nights and
Christ, I really loved you Nancy

'77
Was like a blur
The Pistols flipped off the whole fucking world
Steamed up car windows radio nights
Policemen and their long flash lights
Bee Gees under winter stars
Not all the way, but really far
I swore to her that my love was true
And God knows I longed to show her, too.
I walked hours to her house through streets of snow
Still, Nancy'd never tell me though
But if she had I would have died
What a fucking perfect way to go
'77 /17
Many many many many many nights and
Christ, I really loved you Nancy

'78
When eighteen hit
College-bound and dumb as shit
The music died at Winterland the fourteenth day
I prayed she wanted me to stay. But she wouldn’t say
God she really made me sad
But it looked to her like I got mad
So one day I just wouldn’t talk to her
And to this day, she ain't never said a word
Sid and his Nancy were a year away
But me, I think I really died that day
I want to go back and learn
How not to love someone in turn
Who lets you kiss 'em at a show
Where every punk that you know knows
'77 /17
Jesus Fucking Christ, I really loved you Nancy
Mary Holy Mother of Christ, I really loved you Nancy

-December 2008

Notes made on 3/29/12. In the fall of 1977 I began my last year in high school. It was also the year of the Sex Pistols and punk and new wave, none of which I got at the time. That summer, I remember watching a story entitled “New Elizabethans” on Punk on Lloyd Dobyn’s hip TV news magazine “Weekend”, which substituted for SNL once a month. I remember thinking that it was all a bit scary. Weekend’s misleading premise was that punk wasn’t so much about the music as it was about violence, and that the bands, despite their protestations, really saw punk as a ticket to get rich. Elvis Presley died that summer too.

Lloyd and the boys....

The “New Elvis” Elvis Costello stopped the 1977 Christmas episode on Saturday Night Live, the episode the Pistols were supposed to play on, but could not as they could not get US Visas due to their criminal records. I drove my mother’s silver gremlin in those days, and in the fall 1977 the car radio played fantastic make-out music…Billy Joel’s The Stranger was out. Saturday Night Fever was released.

Nancy was my first girlfriend. She was an aspiring painter. She worked on tech in the school shows, and I performed in those shows, which is how we met. She was cool, and cool to me. She was just about the first girl I ever got the nerve up to ask out. Our first date was that fall. I was invited to tag along with a group of her friends who were going to see the new wild film event in town, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, at the Theater for The Living Arts in Philadelphia which in the 1970’s was an art film/grind house, before becoming a concert venue called The Filmore at the TLA. Interesting coincidence. The Sex Pistols last show was at the Filmore in SF…

Dammit Janet....

I never did see the film that night, after the singing red lips, as Nancy and I made out the entire movie. This was the first time anything that great had ever ever happened to me. I was elated. Through that fall and winter we went to many many movies with her over the next few months, and never really saw those either. Man I was head over heels in love, but Nancy was more reticent, although she apparently enjoyed necking. I wanted her to declare her undying love for me as I had for her (repeatedly), but for reasons which eluded me, but which still confirmed my worse feelings about myself, she would not use the L word. Not once. So one day in Spring, profoundly hurt from unrequited love/requited lust, I just stopped talking to her. And she apparently seemed fine with this as far as I could tell, although later I did hear that she was hurt that I stopped talking to her. Like me I know she is married and has near adult kids. I have tried to reconnect with her, but she’ll have none of it. Smart woman, certainly smarter than I’ll ever be. I still don’t understand women to this day and probably never will. As I have often said, “Por Que No Me Amas!!!!”. Here is a video of a performance at the gallery. There is an MP3 of the song here.