CHERCHEZ LA FEMME
One night Brenda announced, “I’m going to take you to this party, and you’re going tomeet a big record executive, Jerry Greenberg, and it’s going to be great.”
Sure, why not? I thought. I was feeling enough professional confidence to let her dragme to an industry party. I was doing sessions and had a deal brewing¹ at Warners for one ofmy songs to be used in a movie. I wasn’t too invested in this party being the party. Whileshe had a generous heart, Brenda could also be pretty zany, so I sometimes took a lot ofwhat she said with a grain of salt.
We were going to get dressed at her house in Jersey², since she had all the clothes,makeup³, and accessories from being on tour and having some money. She was supposedto pick me up from my apartment. I waited in my cramped⁴ vestibule, slumped⁵ on the tilefloor, for over an hour (mind you, there was no texting back then). Finally, she appeared,revved up, full of energy, and ready to party. Her excitement was infectious.
We started our going-out ritual in her large bathroom. Brenda had all the mousse, hairspray, combs, and curlers you could imagine. With her mixed Puerto Rican and Jewishheritage, I could certainly work with what she had. I attempted to create one long, uniformcoil all around my head by twisting sections of hair around the rod of a curling wand. Ifinished it off with a straight bang. I borrowed a little black dress from her (what else!). Ihad brought a pair of my own opaque⁶ black tights, but I couldn’t fit into her shoes; theywere too small. So I layered my black Vans sneakers with ribbed slouchy socks. I toppedoff the ensemble⁷ with my one statement piece—that Avirex jacket from high school.
I really tried with my look, and it was all right. Brenda told me the party was tocelebrate a new record label, but since, by this time, I was interested in the big labels withthe big boys and big artists, I didn’t have high expectations about who would be inattendance. The new label was the

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