If I Said That I Would Love You: A Performance Poet's Journey (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798295696657)

A memoir by Mason Loika who grew up in Miami, Florida where he tanned as brown as a berry. His dark complexion kept him from touring at Princeton's (N.J.) American Boychoir School in 1956 out of fear audiences would consider the school had become integrated.

After a pedophile attack by the school's guidance counselor, he found solace after his participation in a Carnegie Hall's annex to perform the same Mozart sonata for an audience of one: Louis Armstrong.

Rock 'n' roll embraced his soul as he obsessed over watching American bandstand on TV. Once Loika started writing poetry, he joined the 1968 peace and love generation in Hollywood, California, wrote for both newspapers in Miami, and grieved over John Lennon's assassination.

After relocating to a tony section of Pennsylvania, he drove a limousine back and forth into the Manhattan building where Lennon had died, and found happiness with his ultimate love, an unapologetic lesbian who danced on bandstand.