Around dinnertime, Ted went to pick up some Chinese takeout. He was dying to get high, but didn’t want the smoke to bother his father. His stash was at home, so on the way to Jade Mountain, he stopped by a Jamaican restaurant called Brooklyn Jerk, and bought a nickel bag off a Rasta. It was mostly stems and seeds, but any port in a storm. Ted laughed to himself—any pot in a storm—as he rolled a bone in his car and smoked it down. He felt instant relief, and closed his eyes to listen to the reggae music reaching him like a patch of Carribean blue sky from inside the restaurant. But reggae had to fight with the hideous disco that blared from passing cars. Disco was everywhere that summer. The summer before had belonged to Son of Sam and his all-too-real carnage and tabloid domination. Now it seemed no one wanted anything real at all, and disco fit the escapist bill. And, oh, how he hated it. Ted thought coming down with Saturday Night Fever was worse than coming down with the bubonic plague.
Even the Stones, once the poster boys for hard-rock street cred, were back all over the charts that summer with the godawful, hustle-friendly “Miss You,” and its stupid-ass disco bass line. Wyman had slain Richards, and Jagger didn’t seem to give a shit, just kept right on singing. Moms could finally exhale, Mick wasn’t the Antichrist after all; he was Tony Orlando. Even though Ted wished there were some Puerto Rican girls just dying to meet him, “Miss You” was all you needed to know about the sad state of pop music in the summer of ’78. In November, after the World Series, Rod Stewart would sound the nadir of the depths of rock ’n’ roll with “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” (Fuck no, was Ted’s answer, I think ya are ridiculous.) But that was Rod Stewart, and he’d always been kind of a joke with excellent hair. This was the Stones. This wasn’t Dylan going electric, this was Dylan going Donna Summer. This was Greg Allman marrying Cher. Dance music without meaning, lyrically submoronic. “Disco Sucks” was a good T-shirt.
He tried to block “Last Dance,” broadcast from street transistors, from invading his consciousness through his ears. Then he was forced to do battle with a dreaded Brothers Gibb offering from the ill-fated youngest of the chirping, protean, seemingly infinite Aussie clan, the Billboard #1 “Shadow Dancing”—trying to tune his interior rabbit ears to the Bob Marley righteously wafting from inside Brooklyn Jerk. Reggae turned the beat around for real—made guitar and bass change places. Guitar scratched rhythm and bass stole the melody. That was revolutionary stuff. Bob tried to sing to him not to worry, that every little thing was going to be all right. I don’t know ’bout that, Bob. I don’t know. But Bob Marley was his man. Bob said, “When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.” Ted agreed with that. He also agreed with the opposite. That the herb concealed you from yourself. He would accept both, he would accept the contradiction. An image of his long-dead mother popped into his head—her face on a box of laundry detergent. Like Mrs. Clean. That was strange and seemed to have meaning, but what? I should clean up my act? He didn’t know. He closed his eyes and wished the box of detergent away. One parent to reveal, one to conceal. One parent at a time was more than enough to handle at the moment.