Anarchism & Decadence (4)

The Last Subway Car to Coney Island
- A Conversation between Roxanne Alive and Cookie Orlando
Typed up by Cookie Orlando, NYC

ROXANNE ALIVE:
I was just talking about the party, like…

COOKIE ORLANDO:
So this was on the train?

ROXANNE ALIVE:
It was an 80s dance party on the train. And it was gonna be on the N train going to Coney Island. I wish I still had the flyer because the flyer was so good.

COOKIE ORLANDO:
Did you organize it?

ROXANNE ALIVE:
Yeah. I put it all together. My friend helped me make the flyers. Then we took over the last subway car on the N train, the infamous last subway car on the N train to Coney Island. So we all got onto that subway car, and there’s like complete absurdity because at first we all meet up at the subway and Dave isn’t there. I brought the boom box but Dave was supposed to bring all the music. He had made all these 80s mix CD’s and he was late.

So we were waiting on the subway platform and we were all in taffeta and lace and teased-out hair, plus all the kids who lived at KFC, all the squatter kids are there just like covered in patches and Mohawks and everyone’s just like totally fucking ludicrous looking, just waiting on the subway platform waiting for fucking Dave and we’re playing tag across the subway platform. And finally he shows up at the wrong stop and so we had to take the train to his stop. We finally find him and get on the train, and we’re going to take the train to Coney Island, get out at Coney Island, play skee-ball at the arcade, get back on the train and continue the dance party.

We get to Coney Island. We all pull out of the train and the arcade is closed because it’s winter and it’s midnight! So we get back on the train and we’re like “What the fuck are we gonna do?”

COOKIE ORLANDO:
You could just do the dance party on the boardwalk.

ROXANNE ALIVE:
But it was like cold. It was like January. So we keep dancing on the train. And we’re like hanging upside-down from the bars and everything… We get off at Atlantic Avenue ‘cause we decide we’re gonna go back to Fort Legit, which is like a house that a bunch of kids lived at way out in Brooklyn.

We had to transfer from the N train to the 4 train to get to the house, so we get off at the N platform at Atlantic Avenue, and I’m carrying this huge fucking boom box and wearing fishnets and high heels and tons of taffeta, and I’m carrying a boom box and just blasting lots of really terrible 80s pop music. And we go from the N platform, to the 4 platform, up the stairs, to the top of the 4 platform. There’s like an old lady, MTA workers, all on the platform, and everybody on the platform is into it. The old lady’s into it and the MTA workers are nodding their heads with their arms folded.

And we’re full-on spazzing out and dancing on the platform and I’m just like holding the boom box and having a great time and the fucking cops give me a ticket. And so the police come and they take me away from everybody else with my little boom box. They make me press the stop button on the tape, ‘cause of course it was a tape! Anyway I put down the boom box. I have to go down the stairs with the cops. And this is when I was squatting at the KFC, right? And so of course he wanted any mail we had to confirm our identity as a location. But I also didn’t have any address aside from the address of the KFC, but I couldn’t remember what the address at KFC was ‘cause we all just knew where it was. We knew how to get there by the hole in the fence that we took to the hole in the building that we took to the stairs. But I couldn’t be like “Hey officer, I live right on the other side of Mars Bar, through the hole in the fence behind the car, through the hole in the building. Can you write that on your ticket?”

Of course not! So the cops separate me out and they bring me down the stairwell and they’re asking me where I live. And I had to yell, I was like, “Andy, Andy Soda-Pop, where do we live?” And the cops are like “You’re not allowed to do that. You can’t ask somebody where your address is.” And I’m like “I just don’t remember my address, sorry.” So they write me a ticket with this ludicrous address. And then my friend Mark snatches it out of my hand and she’s like “It’s okay. My parents pay my rent. I’ll just tell them we had a really high energy bill this month.” So she made her parents pay my ticket.

But the best part was, that little old lady on the subway? When the cops took me away, she turned to one of my friends and she said, “If that were my daughter, I’d just kill those cops! What jerks!” This is some 60-year-old lady talking about killing cops on the 4 train platform! So then of course we all get back on the train and as soon as the train doors close, we hit the play button and start the dance party again. Then we got to my friends’ house and it was just this room of red lights and smoke and spilt booze and people making out all over the place and people dancing all over the place until morning. It was absurdly beautiful and it was absolutely amazing.

It also was my going-away party before I went and hitch-hiked around Mexico for a couple of months and the entire time I was gone, I didn’t bring my cell phone and the outgoing message on my voicemail was my friend Andy and my friend Mattie singing really really loud the chorus to some terrible Belinda Carlisle song. It was the most adorable thing in the world.

COOKIE ORLANDO:
I think I may have heard that.
ROXANNE ALIVE:
I’m pretty sure you did.