Long before Jerry Rice even heard of a foxtrot or Drew Lachey swiveled his hips to win first place, I found out just what it felt like to dance with the stars. I had recently moved across country to Los Angeles for a new job at a network news organization. I started work at 5:30 AM, knew few people, and spent my evenings watching too many repeat episodes of “Law and Order” before going to bed at 9:00 PM. I needed to get off the couch and do something exciting, but it had to finish at an early hour. Nothing inspired me. Then it hit me.

I think of the building we lived in as alive, a seething monster, six massive stories of apartments built around a courtyard. All the people teeming like vermin in all the apartments, old women in nightgowns moving past open windows. Cockroaches running down the drain when you turn on the light in the bathroom, rats and mice scurrying through the space in the wall. Husbands and wives yelling at each other in Spanish, music constantly playing and invading my space, the sound of water in the pipes in the walls as people constantly flush their toilets. ... It’s Washington Heights at the northern tip of Manhattan in 1979. I’m six, and I’m practically the only white kid I know.