Roger Zee Memoirs
Crazy Etta 06/14/20
Back in 1970 during my junior year at Great Neck Sr. High School, the town launched a brand new, state-of-the-art, multimedia library on Bayview Avenue in walking distance from my house. When my mom heard about it, she made me march right down and apply for a position. What the Hell, it sure would beat working at the local Bohacks supermarket. LOL! Welcome to another excerpt from my autobiography, the "Life and Times of a Pandemic Musician."
Like a dutiful son, I went and interviewed for a library clerk position. Keep in mind though, the man I talked to looked like a Ronald Reagan clone while I could have played in the Jefferson Airplane! He put me on the waiting list and told me it might take awhile, LOL! When I found out they hired one of my clean-cut friends who applied after me, I marched down and raised a ruckus.
Shortly after, I received a letter from the library informing me that a position had opened up. Right on! What a peachy job. I got to refile the return books. One day shortly after starting, I rode down the elevator with a cart of books and met a Black female employee nicknamed "Crazy Etta." She smiled at me, said hello, and proceeded to reach her hand down my pants and introduce herself to the "Family Jewels." While shocking, yet immensely pleasurable, I did not take it upon myself to report her for sexual harassment.
I told no one of the incident and attempted, without much success, to avoid her numerous in-house approaches. That summer, I spent many an evening hanging out at the local dive bar, McDonnells. Not surprisingly, I began running into Etta there. At the time, plagued with a weak "Playa" game, I ending up chatting with her at the end of many a night. Before I knew it, we would take off and head back to my house into a small guest bedroom, right off the kitchen and downstairs from my sleeping parents and three sisters.
Good Lord the things that woman taught me! Oh did she spoil me over the next year... I remember her asking once, "Why does a smart, good-looking White boy keep bringing home a poor, older, not so good-looking Black woman from the Projects? At this point, a few sheets to the wind, I answered, "Cause I dig you. You turn me on and treat me so well, with none of the BS these other girls always try to put me through.
So on a perfect weather day locked up under this infernal Covid-19 prison sentence, I avoid the insane, death-defying partyers outside in the street and immerse myself in finessing the bass lines to Steppenwolf's completely Bad-Ass "Born to Be Wild" album. One <3
YouTube - Hoochie Koochie Man - Stepenwolf
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