I grew up in Manhattan. Born in the old French Hospital on West 27th Street, we lived at 15 W 81 apt 10F until 1965 when I was eight and moved to 125 E 72nd Street, 13D. I missed my old friends a lot, though we’d been separated by schools, first kindergarten then grammar school. Upper West Side moved to Upper East. Except for 4-1/3 years in college upstate, I lived within one square mile for my first 44 years.
Lost girl twenties though I kept going to art school, I lived with my parents until a summer sublet on the corner off Riverside Drive on west 97th Street. Got into a fight with the musician guy who had rented it to me. He claimed I took his bathrobe while I had the new one Terry had given me, and I had done something with his bath brushes which he’d put on a high shelf, and I had my own. He threw my robe down the incinerator. We had an all-out fight in the vestibule, his lady friend neighbor saying a “girl shouldn’t fight like that!” Then another sublet on west 114th street opposite Columbia, a grad student traveling. She left her tortilla press and something else. I painted the place deep pink!
My mother had a nose for real estate and was unstoppable but I had my own ideas and I took a much different road.