Actually, Damita is quite a story in herself; unfortunately I don't know that much about her. She was a wild child junkie rock'n'roll hanger-around, and she was cute. (You can see her gracing the cover of some album that came out in the 80's... too bad I can't remember who did it. She's looking like she's about 15--she tended to look like that--but she's got a major tattoo or her arm--not so unusual nowadays--and is holding a huge revolver. It's a nice juxtaposition.) Years later when she was staying with me again for another brief spell she stole a bunch of my records, no doubt to sell for smack. I can't be too angry about it. I knew she was a junkie after all. Anyway, she did leave me some records.

Now, back to '78: We had gone to the Mudd Club together, but I came home alone early (i.e. 2 a.m. or so). About 5 a.m. I awoke to the sound of my apartment door being messed with. Since I lived on the fourth floor of a five-storey abandoned tenament (abandoned by all but one other human on the ground floor... that's the Purple Man... another story), I was somewhat alarmed. I grabbed my bat and got up to investigate. It was Damita, along with a hulking, dark presence that turned out to be John Cale. I let them in and went back to bed.

since it was a tiny place, they came over and sat down... her on the bed and him on the only other piece of furniture, a folding chair. I think the TV was on... something other-worldly like The New Zoo Review. We chatted for a little while, but it was clear Cale wasn't all that comfortable with the situation. My guess is Damita had said something like "Let's go back to my place," and what he was presented with didn't meet his expectations. And me, I was pissed off about having been woken up... but this was John Cale, whom I considered (and still do) one of the greatest, so those two facets of the situation tended to balance out, leaving me pretty neutral at that moment. After a while they left.