I Prefer Paris: Vincent and I: Our 45th Anniversary

Forty-five years ago, on March 19, 1977, I met Vincent Gagliostro in New York City, and my life changed forever.

It was an interesting coincidence how we met, and if it wasn’t for a split second in time, we may have never met.

I was 21 years old, and still living at home in Brooklyn with my parents. It was the height of the disco era, and every Saturday night I would go into the city to dance away the night to the disco beat. I was close with my brother Joe, who lived in the city on Fifth Ave. and 14^th Street, and we would frequently go to dance clubs together.

On this particular Saturday, I called Joe and asked him what he was doing that night. At the time, he was attending Parsons School of Design, and was studying interior design. He invited me to come with him to a party one of his classmates was giving, just around the corner from him. He told me to pick him up at his apartment at 10pm and we would go to the party together.

I drove into Manhattan, and had the doorman ring my brother but he wasn’t responding. I thought maybe he was in the shower and knocked on his door to no avail. He clearly wasn’t home. I was pissed because I was looking forward to the party, and figured he went without me, plus he didn’t give me the address. I went back to the street to figure out what I was going to do now that I was already in the city. At that moment, I ran into a couple, Michael and Gail, who were classmates of Joe, who I knew, who introduced me to another classmate, Vincent, who was with them, who I didn’t know. I asked them if they knew about the party, and they said they were actually on their way there, and I could come with them.

My brother Joe never showed up at the party, and I learned the next day, he had taken a disco nap and didn’t hear the door or the telephone.

At the party, I ended up talking to Vincent almost the entire night. I didn’t realize it was a theme party- Think Pink from the movie musical Funny Face, and Vincent was wearing a pink Lacoste shirt (for our 25^th anniversary, I bought a new pink Lacoste shirt, and put it in a Lucite frame.) I especially liked him because he laughed and smiled at all my corny/bad jokes. I felt a deep warmth coming from him, and my instinct told me that this person was going to be a good friend, or something more, but I didn’t know what. I had never been in a longtime relationship before.

Although we spoke to each other at length on the telephone the following week, we had our first official date the following Friday, for dinner and a movie. I don’t remember the restaurant, but we saw The Late Show with Lily Tomlin and Art Carney at the Sutton theater on East 57^th Street and Third Avenue. (Ironically a few years later we rented an apartment right next door). Vincent was impressed when I picked him up in my shiny, chartreuse Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, with white bucket seats.

At the time, Vincent was working at this first job after graduating school at a graphic design company, and I was managing a lady’s shoe store which my family owned, on Maiden Lane, near Wall Street.

I’ll never forget the coat Vincent was wearing when I met him; a kaki green nylon anorak, with a hood, designed by an up and coming, French, fashion designer, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. Even then Vincent was fashion forward, and the jacket was from Saks Fifth Avenue, costing over $200.

The rest is history as they say, and our relationship escalated quickly. In the following weeks, we would spend almost every night together, and within a month I moved in with Vincent, who was living in Tribeca. We’ve been together since then, always living together.

Today we are closer than ever

We went through a lot in 45 years, surviving the summer of Son of Sam, the AIDS epidemic, 9/11, terrorist incidents in Paris, and the Coronavirus.

Here’s to Vincent, the most wonderful, kindest, sweetest, generous, patient, and loving person I’ve ever met.

And here’s to more happy years together.