On May 1, two days after the start of the Los Angeles Riots, we were at Igor’s place in Morristown. Igor was another addition to the scene because he graduated Drew the same year as Barbara Darling and Casey. He became a regular on the strength of our mutual obsession with Nirvana. He, his sister, and his mother, a prominent ballet photographer, emigrated from Russia when Igor was fourteen. They were assisted by none other than Mikhail Baryshnikov. Igor said the only thing in his possession when he made this escape was a cassette tape of Tom Jones singing “Delilah” (apparently a very big song in Russia in the 1970s). We were always fans of Tom Jones (and not as a goof like Engelbert Humperdinck, who was not enough to achieve “goof-factor” status).

At that time, he was living with this girl named Crystal. We had nothing against her, but she seemed a bit too serious and never seemed to be having a good time. Granted, Igor could be serious, but he at least liked to party and drank vodka. I am pretty sure he was glad we showed up to add some levity to his life. However, aside from Nirvana and Tom Jones, his musical tastes were more intellectual than ours. He liked Coltrane, Fripp, King Crimson, and other prog rock acts that I cannot claim to have appreciated then. Later, he even went to a guitar “boot camp” with Robert Fripp that sounded like an EST encounter session. He took his playing seriously and practiced a lot.

Probably thanks to us, his relationship did not survive the year. The Crazy House seems to have destroyed many relationships. However, I like to think they were doomed relationships anyway.

Igor did not have too much furniture in the place aside from a rabbit hutch in the dining room which was probably Crystal’s idea. It was what the Brits would call a semi-detached residence, comprised of two identical-in-reverse, three-story houses which shared a single backyard.

I am not sure whose idea the party was – probably Igor’s – but we went on a Friday after work with Archie, Casey, Barbara, Daniel, and Dee Spite who, once again placed herself in charge of the food. Dee got it in her head to go to the wholesale seafood store on route 1&9 and buy eight dozen live crabs.

Barbara did her utmost to talk her out of it. After all, this is not the sort of thing you bring to someone’s house unless specifically requested to do so. And Igor did not have a well-stocked kitchen as far as cooking implements went. Had we been invited to a Cajun’s back yard in Louisiana, I am sure it would have been no problem as they would have had a cauldron of boiling water and a winch. The only thing I saw Igor ever cook was kasha and borscht. His idea of party food was sushi and caviar. [However, he made one extremely prophetic comment to the effect that, “Chefs will become like rock stars. Then the scene will become so bloated and commercial, you will end up with ‘indie’ cooks.”]

When they arrived at the house with these bushel baskets of live crab, behind Dee’s back, Barbara was mouthing the words, “I tried to stop her!!!”

Dee Spite commandeered a spaghetti pot and boiled the crabs in batches. We made a valiant effort to eat most of them in the yard, but it was still impossible not to make a big mess and we did not have the right implements.

Meanwhile, speaking of Homer Simpson and Day of the Locust, Los Angeles was burning. Everyone was shocked and glued to their televisions. Even my father could not believe it, “What is going on in Los Angeles? This country is going to hell?”

Sue, my boss at Filmakers Library, was also worried because her son was there. It was impossible to know how close any of this was to Hollywood because I had never been there. My understanding was it was not close at all. But that does not mean it did not look bad, like the footage showing people getting pulled out of trucks and beaten.

The next morning, we were up very early. We greeted Igor’s neighbors who we did not meet the previous evening, either because they were frightened of us, or they were not home. They seemed like very health-conscious biker/hiker granola types who dressed in the spandex uniform of the biker. We couldn’t relate but we were polite enough. I am certain we were probably already drinking at that point, and they were probably shocked. As the morning wore on, I noticed a live crab swimming in a puddle inside a garbage can lid. It made me wonder if any other crabs managed to escape the pots.