My mom's maiden last name was Esposito. My father's last name was Mitchell, but his mother was 2nd generation Italian and his father was half Italian, half Scottish. That made me three quarters Italian with the petite facial features of a Scottish girl. My first name was Stephanie. My father studied business at Boston University and ended up working at a small accounting firm up in Maine, where he met my mother. They married, had three kids and as the list of prominent names grew on his portfolio, so did his wealth and position. It wasn't long before his company waged a deal and was merged with a bigger firm based in Boston. Which is where we then moved to. We moved into a house in the suburbs just outside of Boston in the late 1970's.
By the summer of 1983, the end of my junior year in high school, my father knew that he was going to have to make another move within the next 12 months, as yet another merger was looming. He was also entertaining an offer to leave for one of the big accounting firms down in New York. They were known back then as "The Big Eight". The talk of moving once again, put a strain on my mother and father's marriage. Both of my older brothers were already attending Boston University. I had my eye on bucking the family tradition and attending New York University's Business school.
My father and mother decided to separate due to the pressure of his career and the time they lost as a couple. He then jumped over to the Wall Steets', Arthur Anderson accounting firm and took his exclusive clientale with him to New York. His career move to New York and my desire to explore the bright lights of New York City became my grand arm twist to get him to allow me to break "tradition" and attend NYU. He owed me a lot for breaking up with my mother, just as I was pursing my higher education. He was now worth a lot of money and he begrudgingly not only took me with him, but allowed me to live with him on the Upper East Side. He had a company paid for, two bedroom high rise overlooking the East River. The man had gone from a smart poor kid from Lowell, Massachusetts, to a divorced, "Master of the Universe" at one of the Big Eight accounting firms in New York City.
I wanted to do the same, but on his expense. I didn't want to become a clone of him like my brothers had become up in Boston. All they could talk about was money, making more money and dealing with the little people. At 5'5 I was one of the little people, like my mother as compared to them who stood over 6 feet like our father. When I was younger my father used to be a kind man, who could talk to anyone from any walk of life. Color, ethnicity, how much money they made, whether they were dressed nice or homeless didn't matter to him. That's the way he was before he got his promotions in Boston and began hanging out with people who belonged to yacht clubs, golf clubs and never made less than a million dollars a year. Once he hit that plateau, and I hit my teens, we sort of lived in opposite worlds.
I had no problem hanging out on the bad sides of Boston and mixing it up at clubs where mostly lily white girls wouldn't hang out at. I had a couple friends back then, who looked out for me and I played the role of being just an average, city of Boston white girl. Yeah, I had a couple of rolls with some smart mouth girls. Got my ass kicked the first time for being nice. After that, I kicked the next smart mouth girl's ass, got my street credibility and moved on. I dallied in weed a little bit. Nothing else. Drugs just didn't fascinate me. Nor did sexing it up. I had two boyfriends in my life. One white, one black. I drop kicked both of them when I moved to New York and both of them wanted to still just hang out on the streets like as if the streets was going to employ them with a legitimate form of income.
I never hung out with thugs or trash, but I did hang out with people of all colors. I wasn't into the hang out at Martha's Vineyard and deal with only wealthy, upper class white folks. Nope, I wanted to be like my dad used to be. I wanted to be part of the real world. The world that had all sorts of color and life in it.
My freshman year at NYU was going great. Living with my dad wasn't too bad. He was always too busy to even check up on me, my hangouts or my friends. I began to know how my mother felt. He and I lived in the same apartment, but I was lucky to see him four times a week. Whatever, you know? I was in college. I was weaned from him a long time ago.
I got into my NYU hangout crowd rather quickly. Some of my friends there was nice and real. Some were shallow. All of us were filled with dreams of becoming Masters of the Universe in our own different fields of study. A lot of kids there came from families with a lot of money. The school was expensive and students there felt like they "owned" the city, even though we didn't. Some of our dormitories at the time were located just a block away from not so nice, run down areas. So you either hung out by your dorm, a popular club, or with your exclusive set of wealthy, wannabe Ivy League type, jet setters who got to get into places like Studio 54 without ever standing in line.
I hung out with the in crowd that was friendly with the locals in the area. They were a little on the artsy side, or the goth side sometimes. I liked hanging out with the club going side. However, the one night I decided to hang out with a guy from the wealthy, jet setter crowd, the asshole stood me up for some prissy white girl who's father had a summer house on Martha's Vineyard. Martha's Vineyard? Been there, did that every summer since I was 9 years old. Jerk!
That was the night that I stumbled into E Speakeasy out of desperation. Actually just to get away from being so angry for being stood up. I wanted to kill the bastard after the fact. And I was dressed up so nice in my skintight Gloria Vanderbilt, designer jeans and blouse and "fuck me" pumps. I was dressed to kill! I wanted to make every guy around wish I was with him, and every girl around wish she was me with this guy - and the bastard stood me up. Anyway that night at E Speakeasy was the night that would change my life for forever.
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