• Home
  • Archive
  • About
  • Awards & Media
  • Contact
    • Facebook
    • Pinterest
    • Twitter

Courting Destiny

  • Courting Classics
  • Fiction
  • Mainstream Media
  • New York Stories
  • My Parents
  • Mental Health
  • N. Myrtle Beach

Sign Up For My Weekly Newsletter!

How Diana Ross changed my life

August 30, 2005 By pia

From the Courting archives. It’s the last real week of summer; I’m not motivated. Hope to be tomorrow. Like this story.
Diana Ross stands on the driver’s side of her limo with her mouth frozen in a huge smile, and her right arm soldered into what could be construed as a wave. Her office is down the street from my mini-loft, and I see her most nights on my way home from work. I can never decide whether this is her way of recognizing me.

Perhaps she is standing giving a mass greeting, or she suffers from some syndrome that freezes her body. I ponder this each time I see her for the thirty seconds it takes me to walk to my building. But I would have heard as I’m tuned into New York and/or music gossip. I hate Diana Ross. Her friend, Ed Koch, the otherwise occasionally fabulous mayor has let her put “no parking” signs on either side of her building. 63rd Street, between Madison and Fifth, is a deceptively quiet street where nothing ever seems to happen. It’s a great place to live partially because people who insist on driving everywhere could always find parking, and can’t bitch about the hour wait. Secretly, they love the hunt. I’m a big proponent of banning private cars from Manhattan, but enjoy having company more. Diana Ross is ruining my secret parking street as she almost ruined my birthday when she insisted on having that infamous concert in the park during a thunderstorm when young boys ran to Tavern on the Green to overturn tables, and frighten people. A new term will enter the lexicon that night wilding.The boys wanted to take me to a club on the East Side that features Maria Monteyo, a singer in drag, who looks almost as good in gowns as I do. Actually she looks better as she knows how to walk in stillettoes. She has tried to teach me but I’m hopeless. We’ve agreed to go to the club the next night so that the boys can come to my surprise birthday party. It’s going to be at my girlfriend, Lucia’s apartment, and I’ve planned almost every detail as one of my talents is planning parties. If only I had planned to get to the Upper West Side earlier, but how was I supposed to know that people wouldn’t be allowed to go from one side of the park to the other. Both Central Park South and Central Park North are cordoned off to traffic for too long. My boyfriend has to work late, but IÂ’ve seen pictures of the ring heÂ’s going to give me. It’s immense. I can’t get to the West Side until sometime in the wee morning hours. Everybody’s blitzed; I’m shown Polaroid’s of my birthday cake so I can see what I missed; my boyfriend’s making out with some unknown girl who he will impregnate that night and marry. He won’t give her that ring. He will call me every night for months and beg me to take him back.“It wasnÂ’t anything. She was there and you were not. “Should have thought about it then. I’m nothing if not principled. Later I will realize that he was a good boyfriend who actually had money, values (though not that night) and loved me. I hold Diana Ross personally responsible for all that happened that night. Too bad she wouldnÂ’t give a damn if she had learned about it. I spend a long time lamenting not accepting the boys invitation. It was the last year that they were all alive; and the last year before people begin joining “A” groups enmasse.

New York will lose some of its glimmer; stars literally will burn a little less brightly, and for the first time I won’t blame myself for everything that will go wrong. No, it’s all Diana Ross’s fault.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

« Degrees of Separation
Bogalusa LA »

Comments

  1. cooper says

    August 30, 2005 at 8:49 am

    Ha Ha, I heard that is was most definitely her fault. The Bitch.

    It surely does not seem the NY I know , even though I love it, is like the NY you describe. If only it were.

  2. Doug says

    August 30, 2005 at 5:02 pm

    Not in my name!

    Sorry, I was going to say that once again you put a lot of humor in a sad story, one of your gifts. Then I saw the spam just above.

  3. Bone says

    August 30, 2005 at 7:14 pm

    That was a nice story, Pia. Seems like it would have been so wonderful to have been in the center of the world and experienced all that you did.

  4. mrsmogul says

    August 30, 2005 at 8:37 pm

    Do you know it takes way too long for your site to download? For me anyways..as for Diana, I remember that Coming Out song. I liked Donna Summer better. I do like Diana Ross now when she’s causig HAVOC AT HEATHROW now and again!

    IT’s too hot to be motivated! I’ll go look for a swinging Diana Ross pendalum to put up:)

  5. trine says

    August 30, 2005 at 8:41 pm

    you know she was married to a norwegian don’t you. arne næss. mountain climber. and weirdo. 😉

    i knew there was another link…

  6. JC says

    August 30, 2005 at 10:25 pm

    Pia,
    You are such a wonderful and supportive friend. Thanks.

  7. alice says

    August 31, 2005 at 12:22 am

    i saw Diana Ross in person once. she came into the movie theater i worked at…all i have to say is that hair is immense! -=)

    i’m sorry your exboyfriend made such a lame decision that night.
    -=(

Search for your favorite post!

Follow Me!

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Sign up Now!

Sign up now and get my latest posts delivered right to your inbox!

About Me

I live in the South, not South Florida, a few blocks from the ocean, and two blocks from the main street. It's called Main Street. Amazes me too.

I'm from New York. I mostly lived in the Mid-Upper East Side, and the heart of the Upper West Side. It amazes me when people talk about how scared they were of Times Square in the 1970's and 1980's.

As my mother said: "know the streets, look out and you'll be fine."

What was scary was the invasion of the crack dens into "good buildings in good 'hoods." And the greedy landlords who did everything they could to get good tenants out of buildings.

I'm a Long Island girl, and proud of it now.
Then I hated everything about the suburbs. Yet somehow I lived in a few great Long Island Sound towns after high school.

Go to archives "August 2004" if you want to begin with the first posts.

Categories

Archives

All material contained herewith is owned by Pia Savage, LLC

Copyright © 2021 Courting Destiny · Designed by Technology-Therapist