Background: Elise was a classmate of mine from Pascack Hills High School in Montvale, NJ. She was a year behind me. We met in art class. She was something of a prodigy - technically proficient with poetry to boot. Her work was often praised for its excellence. In late September 1978 after a violent falling out with an arrogant, pretentious Art Department head (whose own art had none of the finesse or genius of Elise’s) and her father the next morning - she took off to NYC and became a prostitute - turning her first trick with the business man who picked her up hitchhiking barefoot in suburban New Jersey. She had him drop her off at The George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal at 179th street in Upper Manhattan. She was 16 years old.
These two fragments are from a longer piece about Elise and that period of my life. They are culled from The New York Journals 1977-1980/1986. Special thanks to poet Philip Good.
*
The Airshaft
In March of 1986 I was working at a vanity art gallery at 119 W. 57th Street between Sixth Avenue and Seventh, just down the block from Carnegie Hall. Elise, at that time, was attending Art Students League on a grant from the Revlon Corporation who had taken an interest in the handmade jewellery she was selling from a folding table between The Art Students League and The Hard Rock Cafe on West 57th where she made a surprisingly decent income. Naturally, as fate would have it, we’d run into each other being in such close proximity to one another. At the time she was living in an airshaft at the top of a building next to Carnegie Hall on Seventh Avenue. She was flitting the bill with an older artist who used it as a studio, named Arthur Wood (whose claim to fame was painting the cover for Todd Rundgren's A Wizard a True Star album). Her part of the airshaft was so narrow you had to bend your head to walk around. There were strange, oblique angles in the architecture that also added to the general discomfort of the place. She slept on a narrow cot in a corner, out of the way. The one saving grace of these confined quarters was a small, hatch-like doorway that led onto a roof that offered an amazing view of mid-town Manhattan, you could look directly into the rooms of the Hilton Hotel, a voyeur's dream come true. I had, on more than one occasion, watched a fiery red sunset over the Hudson River from there, observing the light drain from the daytime city sky- until midtown lights popped on one by one. It was truly something to behold.
One afternoon I ran into Elise as I was heading into work. She invited me over for dinner the following Friday. It sounded good - I was getting out of work early that day as it was Good Friday and my Art Dealer boss was heading out early to PA where she lived. My best friend Scott met me in the city that day, hanging out as I closed up the gallery before heading to Elise’s airshaft for chow. Scott was astounded at Elsie's living situation - the address, the environment, that view from the roof. Elise served us terribly undercooked brown rice, semi-soft adzuki beans and kale - all prepared on a barely adequate hot plate. After we bid her well and thanked her for supper, we headed over to eat at a McDonalds on Broadway.
*
Pooh Bear
It had been about eight months since Elise had disappeared. Other than running into her in Washington Square Park - pimp in tow - on my way to a Frank Zappa gig with Phil Good on Halloween, I’d not seen her. Then, one day in Early May 1979, it happened. Elise showed up to (Pascack) Hills dressed like an Iranian refugee complete with hijab. She was in a car with some girlfriends of hers from Hills. We were astounded - How? Why? What the fuck? Then she vanished, as quickly as she arrived, she vanished.
Then it happened. We were sitting in the school parking lot sharing joints when we saw him. He was walking down West Grand Ave in Montvale, New Jersey looking every bit the part - hip hugger slacks, platform shoes, rainbow striped suspenders and a black tee-shirt with silver-gold, iron-on, holographic letters that spelled out POOH BEAR. It was shocking. At that time you just didn’t see black folk in White Landia, let alone a guy who looked like he just walked out of Forty Second Street (Aka The Deuce). The lettering of his shirt sparkled in the sun, he was almost like a vision or hallucination. It was amazing how comfortable, confident and purposeful he was as he sided up to us, lit up a joint and began asking if we’d seen a blond girl. He’s somehow tracked Elise down to her place of origin.
The next day, Saturday May 4, was the annual Washington Square Smoke-In hosted by the Yippies in NYC. A sort of high (pardon the pun) holy day for Pot-Heads. A couple thousand people gathered in Washington Square Park in The Village in order to partake of the sacramental weed (in other words, get stoned out of our heads). There were endless joints smoked, generously given out free by the Yippies. And there was theater - Aaron Kaye (notorious for throwing pies in the faces of political foes) dressed as The Pope. And the maniacal street singer David Peel with his guttural chants of “The Pope smokes Dope!” And there was Pooh Bear. Perched stage right on the flatbed truck being used as a stage for political, pro-pot rants and speeches. David Peel kicked it all off with The Marijuana Pledge of Allegiance (try to imagine that one!) And there was Elise. staying lost within the crowd, still dressed like a Persian refugee, hiding in her hijab and stooping down in the massive gathering that Pooh Bear was now scanning carefully with binoculars. She was also trying to keep below the radar of the NYPD for, as he told us matter-of-factly, she was “holding.” As in serious dope, as in Heroin. She indicated this by showing us a line of fresh track marks on her pale, thin arms . It made me wince. This was serious. And this was sad. Then she was gone again, off into that thinning narcoleptic hoard of stoned revellers and the thick cloud of blue smoke that hovered over it like fog. The A-Political were left to their own devices in the East and West Village while the (tie) dyed in the wool Leftists followed that flat bed truck up to Central Park in a rather pathetic rag-tag march that meant absolutely nothing to the rest of Manhattan.
*Elise Bainbridge Hill was found dead on Sunday September 27, 2026 in Central Park, NYC. She was killed in the gazebo she's called home the past three years. She'd been without an address and homeless - by choice - on and off since 1991. She was murdered by 36 year old Jonathan Robles of West 36th St in Manhattan, a repeat offender with many priors. I'm quite certain NYC's current Mayor cares more about the killer than Elise Bainbridge Hill.
And two from The Jim Carroll Band
No comments:
Post a Comment