Peter became a hero for me to look up to when I was thirteen. Urban, rebellious, progressive, informed, and enough older than me to be a figure of authority without being old enough to be irrelevant. I’m sure he influenced countless voters when he plastered neighborhood cars with McGovern/Shriver bumper stickers, and he earned my vote by introducing me to smoking pot and watching Monty Python.
Overflowing with experience I didn’t have, Peter could talk convincingly about current world events and popular music I had never heard of. I remember having a tough time falling asleep the night Peter came out of his room to say that the Russians could launch nuclear bombs any minute that would destroy our entire country. I didn’t understand how he could be so brave and accepting of something I found so terrifying. I eventually learned that David Bowie explained a lot of it.
Peter grew up wearing and doing things I wished looked good on me. He could put rhinestones down the sides of his velvety looking pants, wear a silky shirt with sleeves that belled out above the cuffs, and style his hair in platform shoes in the entry hall of our house on Queen Anne Hill, and I was jealous. I took the bus downtown, bought silky shirts, even bought a pair of platform shoes once. I wore some of the shirts to school, thinking it made me look pretty cool, but I never had the nerve to wear the shoes anywhere outside my bedroom.
I was at the screening of the first movie he made. He walked from our house down to Kerry Park with his girlfriend and a handheld movie camera, laughing, dancing, mugging for the camera. He put Marvin Gaye’s “Heard It Through The Grapevine” on the stereo, and we sat in his room watching the film. I was sure that if I ever figured out what my style was, that’s what it would look like.
Peter moved into an apartment on Galer, a couple of blocks from our house. As I walked up to visit, he was hanging out the window waving, almost as if the blasting sound of “Bang a Gong (Get it On)” by T. Rex was blowing him through the opening. A few years later, in one of my first apartments, I opened the windows after school and blared my own music loudly enough to prove to the neighbors how with it I was. Sadly, that was the year “Saturday Night Fever” came out, and I bought the soundtrack.
At sixteen or seventeen I drove down the coast with one of my brothers. I think it was Terry, but I have learned that my memory and actual experience are not always the same thing. We stopped one night in Santa Monica and stayed with Peter, who was living with Joe in probably the coolest apartment in the new world. Palm trees, a Fiat convertible, homemade pitchers of Margaritas, and I think it may have been the first and last time I ever tried mincemeat pie. I don’t remember liking it very much. I do remember it looked like Peter was chasing, and catching, his dreams.