Mistaken Identity

Being guilty of your own peccadilloes is bad enough, but I was once confused with another of the same name. Without going into shameful details, this other Louis Carreras was from Arizona and was guilty of being a cad, an abuser of affections, and abandoning sweet young women on whims.

Now types like this namesake I’d maintain do attract attention from some females like moths are drawn to light. Just like some men are drawn to strong women because they foolishly think they are a “challenge,” some women are drawn to “bad boys”. I was definitely not a bad boy.

This was back when I was 18, and a folksinger in low-end coffeehouses in Greenwich Village. I was skinny, and by all reports not all that sexy. The reports that I was actually the infamous Louis Carreras surprised some of my female friends. No way could I have broken the peaceful lives of so many females in Arizona. It was laughable.

But doubt always has a path to creep in. One young lady I had unsuccessfully courted started wondering. “He sings all these blues with sexual innuendo. Am I missing something?” Soon several young women were discussing this: was my apparent lack of skill with females actually a ploy, a tactic to provide plausible denial and coverage for a famed lothario in hiding?

The other Carreras had evidently wooed and abandoned his way to encouraging violent countermeasures by a number of young ladies’ male relatives. Coincidentally, he had departed the Tempe and Phoenix scenes around the time I arrived in the Village. Like many newcomers, I had arrived in the leafy environs of Washington Square for the Sunday madhouse of poets, performers, and Folkies. I picked my place, hauled out my guitar, and proclaimed that I had arrived.

It took time for me to establish myself. And it took time for the myth, legend, and reputation of that other Carreras to travel to the north and east. It was close to a year before anyone made the possible connection. Mostly there was doubt. Could such a romantically inept male actually be the infamous lothario, Louis Carreras? No Way, proclaimed one young lady with intimate experience.

But, you know, some people love a conspiracy story. Soon, embroidered tales of my lothario ways were being kited about. Who knows what might have happened – being assaulted in broad daylight on the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal?

I was saved by the bell, so to speak. The real lothario, Lou, was reported as being in town. Darkly handsome, tall and muscular, and every bit the cad that the stories had foretold. Skinny me was off the hook.

Admittedly, I had eventually taken advantage of the stories. I never openly admitted to being the other Louis, just coyly smiled, looked away, and played a sexually suggestive Blues song. That had been enough for some young women to want to investigate more closely. I had success with the ladies for the first time in my young life.

It couldn’t last, and didn’t. You couldn’t compare skinny me to the confident presentation of the other Louis Carreras. Soon I was grateful. Some of his bad deeds did indeed catch up with him, and he fled the Greenwich Village scene for San Francisco.

I was advised to hide for a week or two.