Woo! How I met Robert.
Was it really so long ago? Yep, 1980. How the decades fly when you’re having fun!
Our mutual Dear Friend (hereinafter known as DF) was delighted to learn that I’d never heard of Moon Mansion, the old deconsecrated church and hippie abode of two artist landlords and their boarders, who were all more or less in genteel artistic poverty but smart and talented. They ate a lot of beans and tofu around a big refectory table, like the family they had become.
DF called up one of the residents, her buddy Bob Goodman, and told him she wanted to surprise me with a tea party there, and would he help her host it? Sure, he said, he’d be glad to.
[Detour note: We had never met, though he had taken a picture of me at one of DF's costume parties. I was dressed as a stripper, with black bra/panties/stockings, a black negligee, rhinestone pins everywhere, and around my neck a ten-foot silver boa (formerly on a Christmas tree) that touched the floor on both ends. It felt delightfully naughty, though I was more covered than in a swim suit. I thought I was gorgeous, not realizing till later that my white backside glowed through that black peignoir like Moby Dick.]
OK, back to Moon Mansion. As I recall, it was July 9, my birthday. DF picked me up at my condo, settled me in her car, gave me rozberries (raspberries, my favorite), and then blindfolded me. I should add that a blindfold was always part of our surprises for each other. She drove me around for ten minutes to confuse my sense of direction, then the car bounced over some broken pavement and stopped. I had no earthly idea that I was actually only half a mile from where we’d started.
The car door opened, a strong hand took my arm, and a deep voice said, “It’s OK. I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall.” Woooo! My very first impression of Robert. What an imprinting that was.
They led me up rickety stairs, helped me over a threshold, and took off my blindfold. I opened my eyes and found myself in a magical place. High above the former sanctuary soared a ceiling covered with painted clouds. Across the way was a ladder that led to the belfry. Small vignettes were staged here and there, from various eras or events. The one I remember was Victorian, with carpet-covered floor cushions to lounge on and a collection of antique beaded evening bags.
A gallery ran around the other part of the building. The bathroom was up there, with its claw-foot tub and gorgeous stained glass window. I later learned that Robert-the-photographer had once taken some portfolio pictures there of a spectacularly beautiful, young, dark-haired model dressed in a bustier and garter belt cum black stockings. I suspect she pulled them off better than I could have. So to speak.
Beneath the gallery was the former choir-robing room, now Bob Goodman’s bedroom. He asked me not to step on his dragon rug from Nepal. He usually kept it on his bed, but he’d put it on the floor in celebration of this august occasion. While DF set up the tea party outside, he and I sat on his bed and talked.
After awhile DF called us out for the elegant tea party she had set under big trees on an outside bricked area, shared by the resident goat and peacock. It was the Sixties all over again, this extraordinary retreat just two blocks off Central Expressway.
After the tea party, Bob told DF that he would take me home later. We still wanted to talk. And talk we did, all afternoon. I asked him whether he wanted me to call him Bob or Robert. He was surprised—no one had ever called him anything but Bobby (child) or Bob (adult). He decided that he definitely wanted me to call him Robert, and he has never changed his mind.
So there we were, in Moon Mansion, falling immediately and deeply into Like, with Love waiting around the corner. But that story is for another day,
That’s my how-we-met story. What’s yours?
