Today, it seems Genesis Breyer P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV would have turned 73, had that individual not passed away in 2020. As such, I thought I’d share my one and only P-Orridge-centric anecdote.
In about 2018 or so, both of my children were streadily growing, and the small bedroom they shared was swiftly becoming too small to accommodate them, not least in that they were (and remain) of different genders. The wife and I had long put off finding a new apartment, as the travails and curve balls of life kept getting in the way. Despite the fact that we loved the building we were living in, we dutifully started to go check out a few places that might better suit our family.
Most of what we saw was pretty dispiriting – glum apartments in dreary post-war buildings, or grim, ground-floor railroads with unnerving proximity to whatever was happening on the sidewalk, mostly in neighborhoods we had no connection to, much less any desire to live in. We were getting pretty discouraged in very short order.
We then heard about an opportunity in “Two Bridges,” which is sort of the most southeasternly portion of the Lower East Side (or, more accurately, Lowest East Side), thus named for its placement near the bases of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge over the East River. We have some friends who live over there, and while quite remote (fifteen minute walk to the nearest subway entrance), their home is lovely.
In any case, we went up an looked, and while the buidling itself seemed a bit off-the-beaten track (the lobby faced the roar of the FDR Drive, looking east toward Brooklyn), when we checked out the apartment, it was bright and roomy. We paced around the rooms for a while before feeling satisfied, and then made our way out the door.
We stood in front of the elevator discussing the prospect for what seemed like a half an hour, waiting for the lift to make multiple stops on its way up to whatever floor we were on. When the doors finally opened, the elevator cab’s lone passenger stepped out and onto the landing we were standing on – one unmistakable Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, who gave us a polite smile before passing and then vanishing behind a door down the hall next to the apartment we just left.
Despite having been an avowed fan of Throbbing Gristle’s more experimentally visceral forays into confrontational, proto-industrial music, I said noting, more shocked than anything else by the sudden appearance of that band’s primary instigator. I knew he lived on the Lower East Side somewhere, but never in a million years would I have guessed this particular building, much less next to an apartment that I was considering moving into.
My wife didn’t get it. “Are you alright?” she asked as the doors of the elevator closed behind us. I explained who the garishly attired (camouflage and hot pink) “pandrogyne” was who we just passed us in the elevator bank, and she stared at me blankly. Having grown up in England in the `70s and `80s, Peggy knew her share of British punk and post-punk, but Throbbing Gristle was still a bit too left field for her.
In the end, we didn’t move, but rather did some slight renovation to the kids’ room to make it a bit more conducive to a more amenable configuration of beds and desks. But I’ll never forget briefly entertaining the prospect of moving in to the apartment next door to Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
Who knows? We may have become fast friends.
….but I kinda doubt it.
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