These were "my girls" in New York. Laurie Ketcham and Carmina Marcial. Camina was a monster-in-training here, but Laurie and I were full-fledged Doctors of Monstrous Behavior. (I, in fact, had a special permit to stomp on Tokyo because of a Japanese boyfriend.) Carmina’s still very much around, but Laurie passed away two days ago.

Laurie was one of the first REAL New Yorkers I met upon moving there. Her paternal grandfather, William Tredwell Ketcham was a direct descendent of Cornelius Vanderbilt, she had a spiffy condo on Murray Hill, and impeccable social contacts. But I met her at the second incarnation of Studio 54 through my old friend and neighbor, Bob, who met her through our other neighbor and Studio party-giver, Milan. It was the Go-Go Eighties and anything went.

Laurie loved gay men and, in particular, Bob; but as Bob’s schooling took him further away, I became the partner in crime. We addressed each other as “Partner” accordingly, and I would always get a call from her saying, “Hi, tiger; do you want to have a little fun tonight, or a lot?” The question was rhetorical and our activities ridiculous.

I would often pass out at her place and go directly to work a few blocks away at The Empire State Building. One day the office manager politely said, “Alexis, it’s one thing coming in here smelling of vodka and another with glitter in your hair, but the shoe print on the back of your shirt has got to go.”

Trips out to her parents sprawling 20’s mansion in Old Lawrence were cherished. I used to marvel at the way the house was slowly crumbling as the family money dried up while the parties got wetter. Laurie’s mother taught me the phrase, “functional alcoholic”, one brutally hung over morning at The Lawrence Beach Club. Lawrence was crumbling, too, as the old families were being pushed out; one massive home down her street had been sold to a Hasidic group. Talk about “There goes the neighborhood” for the Ketchams!

With the turn into the nineties, Lauries direction went to new career moves and loves and mine toward chronicling the club kids and drag queens who now ruled the nights of New York. We kept in contact and never could forget what we did together. Some time back, Bob (who is STILL my neighbor, but only on weekends in winter) told me Laurie had come down with Lou Gehrig’s Disease and had moved to her parent’s new home on Jamestown Island in Rhode Island. They began to see each frequently and I got to learn about how terrible that condition is. He told me of how, confined to a wheel chair and having lost one leg, he held a martini glass to her lips as they partied all night. One day she called me here and I heard that voice say, “Hi, tiger!” and even though I wanted to cry, we laughed. We always did; why stop now?