Twins but not

Los Angeles.  Some time in the 80s.

I'm working at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA).  Once in a while I go upstairs to visit Gerry Driva, this artist who does all their graphics and publications.  One day Gerry brings in these photographs a friend of his has taken of a local band, Levi and the Tribe.  I'm really struck by one of the band members, this guy with the greatest style - he has a Dr. Seuss Cat-in-the-Hat tattoo and a raccoon tail hanging from his leather jacket.  A shock of dark hair cuts across his angular face.

I make a point of going to the Cathay de Grande where the band is playing and dig on watching this guy, I think he was playing sax for them.  I meet him briefly after the set.  This is a time when I'm out in clubs a lot and over the next few months I see the guy around.  But something odd happens.  I keep seeing this guy but I can't figure out if he's the same guy from the band.  But he is.  But he isn't.

This continues for the next year or so.  Finally I see the guy again at a Jonathan Richman show at McCabes, and I decide if I ever see him again I'm going to ask him if he's the same guy from Levi and the Tribe.

The next night I'm at the Music Machine on the Westside - I think the Minute Men are playing - and sure enough there he is.  I go up to him and say "Excuse me, you remind me of someone..."  But before I can finish my sentence this other guy comes up and I point to his friend:  "...THAT guy."

It's the weirdest thing.  I'm looking up at these guys (they're pretty tall) and I'm amazed to see that they look NOTHING alike.  One guy, the one I'd originally seen in Gerry Driva's photograph, is dark featured, semetic, brown eyes and angular cheekbones with a large nose.  The other is Korean-American - a round face with Eurasian eyes and a tangled rats nest of hair, died white, gray, green, blue.

Strangest thing.  They're best friends.  They look nothing alike.  And I can't tell them apart.

p.s. The internet is an odd place.  I just looked around and I'm almost certain the guy in the above picture is Guy #1.  I'll leave his name out of it for his own privacy.

The Big Apple

I finally decide to move to New York.  A lot of my friends are heading there and there are a few reasons why it just makes sense.  So after a family reunion in Chicago, my sister and I hop a plane and arrive one afternoon, me with all my worldly possessions, having only visited there once, and my sister, younger, never having been there.  I realize I have no idea where my friends are living so I call the one telephone number I have.  No answer.

My sister and I get in a cab and I simply tell the driver "East Village."  I feel like an immigrant from the Old Country, arriving in the New World with nothing but a suitcase.  I have just one address in New York.  It's for the guy who isn't answering his phone.

When the taxi pulls over to the building, we load all my stuff onto the sidewalk.  I buzz the apartment.  No answer.

So we sit on the stairs.

Within two minutes my friend Gabrielle comes walking up the street and sees us.  "Hey!  What are you doing here?"  "I just moved here," I say.

Two minutes later my other friend Kate comes wandering from the other direction.  "Hey!  What's up?"  "I just moved here," I say.

Sometimes it's best not to dwell on minor issues such as what might have happened if this gnarly coincidence hadn't transpired.

Because it did.