Love Saves the Day

The best and worst thing about owning a store is that anybody can walk in. Homeless people came in to get out of the rain. There were those who came into the store three times a day every day because they had no one else to talk to. Or else they were obsessive about checking the used bins for the latest promos and onesies that some music critic had just unloaded. I was more lenient with such people than Noel. I always made sure we had coffee and soda and, when the weather was cold, I stockpiled donated blankets and coats in our basement to distribute. I wanted to be part of a community, but more than that I wanted people to know who Laura was. She couldn’t always be in the store or at home with me or the Mandelbaums. She had to be allowed to play outside with her friends, but I slept better at night knowing there was a veritable army in place to help me keep watch.

We had plenty of “real” customers, too. Scenesters clamoring for Lydia Lunch and New Order. Kids experimenting with Latin hip-hop at Cuando on Second and Houston checked out our salsa section. DJs traveled all the way down from the Bronx to buy Schoolly D or old-school funk they could remix. A cross-dressing weed dealer—an ardent Reagan Republican with an uptown cabaret act under the name Vera Similitude—was in at least once a week to quote Ayn Rand and buy opera records. I learned that anybody with green hair automatically wanted punk and couldn’t be talked into anything else. Suburbanites came for the latest Springsteen or Talking Heads album, and these were the people we’d have the most fun with. They’d break their twenty on the new Bon Jovi and leave with something by Public Image or Liquid Liquid because I’d have it playing in the background. What’s this crazy song? It doesn’t sound half bad, they’d say, before digging into their wallets for extra cash.

Running a record store was like being a DJ in some ways. On weekends, when the store was packed, I had to get a sense of the crowd. I could feel the mood shift depending on what music I decided to play over the store’s speakers. If I played the Jellybean Benitez–produced electro cover of Babe Ruth’s “The Mexican,” every single person in the store would be dancing, and I’d sell all the copies I had in stock.

Whenever Anise was in town, whether to promote a new album or to play Madison Square Garden, she always did a “meet and greet” at my store. In interviews, she said the only place in New York she’d buy music was at Ear Wax on 9th Street. That helped a lot, as did the mentions we started getting in the New York City guidebooks distributed to tourists.

Still, Ear Wax never made much money. Everything I could spare, after paying my rent and handing out well-earned bonuses to my staff, I reinvested. Looking back, this was probably the biggest mistake I made. But at the time I saw the store as Laura’s and my future, as our only possible future. Laura was going to go to college one day, was going to have all the things I’d never had. I was going to make sure of it.

Women back then were first starting to enter the workforce in droves and debating the merits of day care centers and nannies. But I was able to pick my daughter up every day after school. I’d bring her back to the record store where she could have a snack, read a book, do her homework. I got to watch Laura grow up, not just in a general sense, but in all the little ways. I could marvel at the glory of her unbound hair freed from the school day’s ponytail, or watch one small, perfect hand tracing the lovely shape of her face as she read her schoolbooks. On weekday afternoons, when the store was dead, Laura would choose records for the two of us to sing along to. She would always insist on turning the music down and surreptitiously, fading out her own singing until my voice sang alone.

On school holidays, Laura would come to the store with me hours before it opened. We’d pull albums from the shelves and spread them all over the floor, hopscotching among the squares of cracked tile between them. Nimble and tall—light as a pigeon—she never once brought her heel down on a record by mistake. On the nights when I worked late, Laura could stay with the Verdes or the Mandelbaums, safe in a loving home until I came to collect her. She was a happy child, and I was happy, too. I had Laura, I had my business, I had my music. It was the happiest time of my life.