In the Name of Love

Nighttime In My Second Life

At the beginning of 1982, I was still living two lives.

The more visible, predominant life was the one I had begun with my friend David after we had taken all our belongings on a late-night moving adventure with a U-Haul truck on June 28, 1980, leaving the hot desert heat of Phoenix, Arizona, and landing in Los Angeles in the morning hours. My goal was always to live in Los Angeles, but I was sidetracked by the pull of something different in Phoenix. Unfortunately, I never figured out what difference would appeal to that town to me. It was just too hot. Dave and I made the pact and the plan and wrangled the transfer from TGI Fridays in Phoenix to TGI Fridays in Marina del Rey. The day arrived, the LSD was dropped, and the trip landed us in La La Land, accompanied by the bouncy sounds of "Fame" emanating from the passing cars. It was a Saturday morning. We had waited for this moment for so long, and here it was.

The first couple of years in Los Angeles were all about assimilation. I am still a New York kid living his dream in the land of sunshine and movies. But this is the early phase of the adventure. This part continues to be dominated by inauthenticity due to my ever-troubled inside feelings of shame, disgust, fear, and ugliness.

My roommate and co-workers did not know I had those feelings daily. There were a lot of days when I didn't know myself. Those of us who grew up in any portion of our younger years hiding our true nature from the rest of the world for fear of persecution or humiliation, learned to take on the personality of our central character as though it were the authentic one. It could be confusing, but nothing couldn't be drowned out with alcohol, marijuana, hash, different types of barbiturates, cocaine, crack, ecstasy, and the ever-diminishing Quaalude (although that was more prevalent for me in the 1970s in New York).

My time at Marina del Rey's TGI Fridays, which was located off of Lincoln Blvd at Maxella Ave near a Marriott (or was it a Hilton?), was somewhat insane. I don't know that I drew a sober breath the entire time I was at that restaurant. Dave and I started in early July of 1980, he as a barback and I as a waiter. It was a fast-paced and hectic environment. The established crew accepted us as transfers, but not without some time playing lowest on the totem pole. Soon, our partying and drug-addled natures slotted us in with the heavy hitters, and we were off to the races with daily and nightly trips to the centralized bar whenever our shifts ended. We would have our shift drink (for some, like myself, we would already be several drinks into the day). The party was always at TGI Fridays. After the bars closed, we'd be out on the patio raising a ruckus and then back to someone's house (often Dave and mine).

This type of behavior dominated almost the entire time between our entry in July 1980 and early 1982. But this is where the double life started to take place for me. In high school and even in Phoenix, I paid attention to the women out of fear of being discovered, but by the early 1980s, I was no longer interested in even trying. I was starting to go to different and odd places, sit near what felt like eligible men, and look for validation, conversation, and company. I had to put myself out there. I was going a bit mad in my closet, and my lies were becoming more predominant than the truth. I didn't know who I was supposed to be any longer and lost track of any values or self-worth I could muster up before this period.

It was in 1981 that I began to meet others in my predicament. Some closeted, some keeping lower profiles in the Marina del Rey, Santa Monica, West LA area that we inhabited because it was still a rough time to be queer anywhere. Through some of these souls, I was pulled into the orbit of West Hollywood. I would secretly drive up, often if not always already drunk and high, and go to bars that existed at the time to immerse myself in what felt like an underground culture filled with people just like me. I remember the feeling of going into my first gay nightclub when I was in Phoenix, Arizona. At that time, it was under the pretense of "tagging along" with a couple of girlfriends and a guy who was probably gay, but at the very least was far more comfortable in his skin than I was.

This first club was called "Hotbods." It was the picture of Dorothy walking from black and white into a magical world of wall-to-wall color. I was in my heaven. But I never went back. This feeling of freedom and awe would not be repeated for a couple of years when I walked into Studio One on Robertson Avenue in what would become the City of West Hollywood about three years later in 1984. Studio One was a cavernous warehouse-like building on the second floor. You would walk up the stairs into the wildest of strobe lights, darkness, smells of men and poppers, and the thumping sounds and energy of hundreds of men dancing on that enormous and exciting dancefloor.

In 1981 and 1982, disco sounds were still alive and well in places like Studio One. The boys loved to dance and sweat, shirts off and shorts so little there would be a sea of ass cheeks pushing out the bottom.

So many musical triggers come to me from Studio One and those years. From the beginning of 1982, I remember this sound of electronic rock, dance, and electronic mixed with huge, loud guitars and keyboards, and the thunderous tribal sounds of percussion on a tune from the United Kingdom called "In the Name of Love." This was my introduction to The Thompson Twins, a British band that, in its earliest form, held up to six members, not one of them being a twin. The band's name came from the English version of a film called "The Adventures of Tintin," where the two main characters were bumbling detectives who looked much like each other but were not twins.

"In the Name of Love" was a giant dance hit for the Thompson Twins in 1982, making its way to the top of the Dance chart for upwards of six weeks. The song later became a dance hit in the United States, again making its way to the top of the dance chart of 1988.

In later years, I grew to love and respect the band for so many other hits that crossed over to American charts and took over at the clubs and the charts. Songs like "Hold Me Now," "Doctor, Doctor," "Lay Your Hands on Me," "You Take Me Up," "King for a Day", and "We Are Detectives" still work for listeners today. But there will never be anything like the thump, thump, thump of Scott Forbes' Studio One again. Talk about taking my own definition of heaven…

Hey you,

I’ve seen that face before

It’s you in the picture which hangs on my bedroom wall

Is it true? All of those things that they say about you

So tell me, tell me, tell me what am I supposed to do

In the name of love, yeah

In the name of love

In the name of love, yeah

In the name of love