Читать книгу Disasterama! - Alvin Orloff - Страница 13

A FEW LONELY MONTHS AFTER MICHAEL departed, I dropped out of school, quit my messenger job, and said goodbye to friends and family so I could join him in Manhattan. Arriving in the June of 1981, I settled into town with plenty of gusto, but no savoir-faire. Utterly lacking in experience, skills, or stick-to-itiveness, I got—then lost or quit—a series of menial jobs in record time: mail room clerk, bicycle messenger, bathhouse attendant. You couldn’t sink any lower. As for living quarters, Michael and I shared a studio on West 14th Street, a gang and graffiti-ridden boulevard of broken dreams. Our building was in some sort of renovation limbo and not strictly supposed to be inhabited so there was no heat, but it did have a loft bed, which I thought terribly chic.

Most every evening Michael and I popped pills—black beauties, Christmas trees, white crosses—then hit the bars for booze and chatter. New Yorkers have always been a garrulous lot, and even in the lowest dives people held forth on art, politics, and their homespun philosophies, along with the perennial gay topics of which famous people were secretly gay and where all the hot boys were. When, thanks to the pills, we started feeling tingly and superhuman we’d head off to Danceteria where we’d dance to the likes of Soft Cell, O.M.D., Heaven 17, Altered Images, Taco, Fad Gadget, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Scritti Polliti, Pigbag, and Yaz.

Michael, always looking for social significance, ascribed world-historical importance to our nightlife. “Nightclubbing is recreation, and recreation allows us to re-create ourselves and society,” he proclaimed. “It’s easy to tune out the disadvantaged when they’re chanting slogans and waving protest signs. But at nightclubs, everyone’s guard is down and they’ll listen to strangers who’ve led lives different from their own and learn to see them as human. You can change people’s opinions faster with stories than debates. For example, Gilded Age plutocrats only socialized with their own kind so they didn’t see the working class as human. Then, in the Roaring Twenties with Café Society, it became hip to socialize with writers, gangsters, flappers, artists, actors, and musicians. The rich learned to see their social inferiors as fun, interesting characters and consequently developed sympathy for them. That breakdown in snobbery helped make the New Deal possible when the depression hit. And after interracial socializing became popular with Beats and on the jazz scene in the 1950s, it became de rigueur for whites to support civil rights. Now that straight people socialize with gays at discos and new wave clubs it won’t be long before supporting gay rights becomes so hip only total bumpkins will dare be homophobes.”

In 1981, gay male sleaze reached an all-time apex. Gay New York was a non-stop erotic cabaret, a raunchy netherworld of bathhouses and bars with back rooms, streets full of cruisers, and parks full of perverts. Plenty of guys were monogamous, sure, but the prevailing mood celebrated promiscuity and sexual specialization. There were guys obsessed with black leather, orgy rooms, hustlers, muscles, the piers, bondage, transvestites, glory holes, exhibitionism, “chicken,” you name it and the more the merrier. In San Francisco, Michael had been nearly asexual, but in New York, he became a dedicated horndog. Since I accompanied him everywhere, I suddenly found myself in all sorts of sexy places and quickly discovered that something was seriously different. In switching coasts I’d gone from invisible to irresistible! Men ogled me, introduced themselves, bought me beers, and invited me home. These men, I understood, were not interested in me as a person. They barely listened to a word I said, undressed me with their eyes, and invaded my space with octopus arms. For them I was a trophy or a boytoy, a mere object existing solely for their own lurid, sexual gratification.

Finally!

I gleefully went home with man after man and frequented back rooms where I enjoyed a smorgasbord of fleshly delights. In this slutty milieu every sexual encounter was infinitely casual, an act without an echo. And yet, for me, these acts never resembled the soulless athleticism of porn. While surrendering to physical pleasure my babbling brain shut up and my sense of self dissolved. I felt—don’t laugh—a profound sense of mystical communion with the soul of humanity and a transcendent love for the cosmos.

Well, that, and the cheap ego gratification of being found attractive. Cheap or not, such gratification changed me. Growing up as a sexually-frustrated youth I’d regarded my body as a shameful and disappointing nuisance, a thing to be managed and hidden under clothing. Once I’d joined the ranks of the doable, I saw my body as man-bait, something to be displayed and wielded—a thing, albeit one I was happy to own. Then, slowly, over the course of a thousand kisses and caresses, my psyche conjoined with my flesh. My body became me and I became a boy animal, someone who might just climb a tree for fun, walk atop a fence balancing like a cat, or run about half naked enjoying the feel of sun and wind on my skin.

While romping about New York I discovered two facets of gay life that became leitmotifs of my young adulthood: genderbending and hustling. First contact with both came via another pair of inseparable friends, Vinny and Jade. Vinny, who worked with Michael at a dirty movie theater on West Street, was a tough, wiry kid with a scrunchy little face, but cute. He spoke in the profanity-laden patois favored by New York’s outer-borough underclass. “So fuckin’ hot out dere ya could fry a egg on a bald man’s head!” Around him I felt like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Vinny’s employment at the theater was temporary as his preferred occupation was hustling. He was renowned for his ability to pick up tricks anywhere—in line at the bank, riding the subway—and told dramatic stories that imbued him with Wild Boy Outlaw allure. He’d had to quit hustling when an over-enthusiastic customer accidentally damaged his nether-regions, but as soon as he saved up enough for some unspecified operation, he planned to quit the theater and return to the big money and glamor of selling his ass.

Jade was a delicately thin queen with a long face, sharp cheekbones, and big teeth—like a horse crossed with a supermodel. I say queen, but Jade’s gender was blurry. If pressed, I’d say she was 20 percent effeminate gayboy, 20 percent drag queen, 20 percent transvestite, and 40 percent transsexual. Jade sewed her own outfits of the so-wrong-they’re-right variety which she paraded around in everywhere, even drearily dangerous West Street where truckers and men from New Jersey went for closet-case sex. After seeing her in a purple satin leotard with a short cape I wondered aloud if she weren’t tempting fate. New York, like absolutely everywhere, was full of queer-bashers who mocked, robbed, beat, bludgeoned, and occasionally killed their targets.

“She’ll be OK,” Michael assured me. “Street queens are tough. They have to be. Remember, it was queens who fought the police at Stonewall back in ‘69.”

On Tuesdays, Jade, Vinny, Michael, and I always went to the Anvil for new wave night. Located in an ancient brick building on the edge of the meatpacking district, the club was notorious for raunch. Connoisseurs of decadence, like German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder (in full leather) and Truman Capote (allegedly), went there to gape at nude go-go boys, dance with abandon, or join the throngs of beautiful men in the basement who were (as the joke went) engaged in their own brand of meatpacking. The club also hosted drag acts like the seven-foot-tall Euba who—perhaps taking the epithet “flaming faggot” a bit too literally—often livened up her songs’ finales by setting herself on fire.

When, after much trying, Jade got herself booked at the Anvil, Vinny, Michael and I stood in front of the stage to cheer her on as she lip-synced “Atomic,” a danceable torch/anthem by Blondie. On reaching the lyrics, “Oooooh, your hair is beautifuuuul!” Jade knelt down to Michael and lovingly tousled his locks—recently bleached arctic white—while he gazed up at her in starry-eyed rapture. This wasn’t a man in a dress aping femininity for laughs, but a solemn ritual in which an androgyne priestess channeled goddess energy for her audience of congregants. Raised by devout atheists, I’d never felt the slightest twinge of religiosity, but that night I joined the cult of gay Diva worship.

The worst thing about New York was its high cost of living. My paltry paychecks barely got me through each week, plus Michael had a habit of borrowing money and not paying it back. In desperation, I decided to become a gold digger, which actually made sense! Like all good gays, I’d spent countless hours watching movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, swooning over sassy starlets who overcame adversity with moxie, pizzazz, and a ready supply of snappy one-liners. As a result, my subconscious was crowded with doddering dowagers, scheming chorus girls, and madcap heiresses. To these gals, becoming a gold digger seemed a perfectly natural career choice. So yes, my morals were deranged, but don’t blame me! Blame Fox, Warner, RKO, Paramount, and MGM.

I didn’t quite manage to marry a millionaire, but I did snag Spencer, a tiny, balding, bespectacled lawyer in his late twenties. He wore nice Armani suits, lived in a swank West Village apartment, and his cheeks dimpled cutely when he smiled. Also in his favor, Spencer introduced me to the music of Nino Rota and the new East Village art scene. Unlike sugar daddies in the movies, though, Spencer failed to shower me with diamond bracelets or rent me a swank apartment. Still, he did pay my way into chic clubs and take me out to dinner a lot. It helped.

We’d been dating a couple of months when Spencer’s gay and Teen Beat-ishly handsome little brother, Brendan, showed up. I would’ve found him attractive except that he dressed like a boring Preppie and radiated a slick, cold air of blasé entitlement. An aspiring photographer, he described his signature style as “bringing back Hollywood glamor,” which struck me as painfully insipid. Brendan got Spencer to introduce him around town and overnight his celebrity photos were appearing in glossy magazines. I’d known America wasn’t a meritocracy but watching Brendan’s effortless ascent filled my mind with fantasies of gulags and guillotines. Michael, who carried a big working class chip on his shoulder, was equally appalled. “You know why the ‘invisible hand of the market’ has to be invisible?” he asked. “So nobody sees it giving all the good jobs and success to well-connected rich kids.”

Shortly after Brendan’s arrival, Spencer asked me out to a fancy restaurant. It was a night like any other till we finished and he began toting up my share of the check. “Uh . . .” I stuttered lamely, “I think I left my wallet at home.” Thereafter, at random intervals, he asked me to pay my own way. Being a penniless teenager, this led to much embarrassment. I couldn’t understand why Spencer had started doing this till he let slip that Brendan thought I was a cheap hustler. “He’s crazy!” I said with unfeigned outrage. True, I had been hustling Spencer, but only ironically. I actually liked him. Spencer let it drop, but the next time he invited me over for cocktails he suggested I bring my own vodka. Naturally, I broke up with him. The rich really are different than you and me. They’re cheaper.

Soon after that came a night when I found myself without enough money for my preferred dinner of tuna and Swiss on rye with a side of potato salad. I needed to sell something for cash, but the only things of value I owned were my records and my body. Naturally, I chose the latter. Michael, who’d hustled a bit at my age, was also broke and offered to guide me through my first trick in exchange for dinner. “We’ll go to the Haymarket up near the Theater District. Just remember the ground rules: Ask for the money up front. Be clear about what you will and won’t do. And if the john wants you to stay more than an hour he has to pay extra.” We gathered just enough change for two beers and walked thirty blocks uptown to the bar.

Inside, the Haymarket was dark, as befitted a cesspit of depravity. We bought our beers, then sat near the pool table and waited. Sat and waited. Waited and sat. The bar wasn’t exactly hopping, just half a dozen middle-aged men in cheap suits leering at a dozen young guys playing pool and hanging around with wrong-side-of-the-tracks swagger. “Maybe I’m too old,” I said. I’d just turned twenty and was mortally afraid of aging past attractiveness.

“Nah,” said Michael.

I examined the boys more closely. Sleeveless tees revealed the taut, tanned arms of kids who played stickball in vacant lots. Deep voices boomed with cocky confidence and a total disregard for Standard English grammar. Even their un-hip feathered hair and crooked teeth oozed sexiness. “Maybe I’m too ugly.”

Michael’s eyebrows furrowed as if to say, “Shut up.”

I only had to wait a few minutes longer before a manatee in a dark blue suit bellied up to the table nearest me and leered. “Buy you a drink?” It was on. We taxied to his apartment, attractively furnished with Japanese rice-paper screens, where we shared a joint that made me feel like an undersea creature from the briny deep. In that odd condition sexing it up with a manatee didn’t seem so bad. A short while later I returned home with sandwiches, chocolate milk, and cash to spare. Victory!

I went back to the Haymarket only a half-dozen more times. The johns were mildly gross, sure, but what really bugged me was waiting to get propositioned. It often took hours, and sometimes it never happened. The other hustlers weren’t friendly and there wasn’t enough light to read so I’d just sit there going mad with boredom and self-consciousness. After one particularly annoying trick tried to stiff me on my fee, I swore off the whole business.

Michael and I weren’t living in Manhattan so much as glimmering across its surface like sunlight on water. We lacked the roots or entanglements that would have made us real New Yorkers. I knew this well, if only instinctively, and thus it wasn’t too hard a decision to leave town when I learned my father was dying and my mother wanted me back home. My only qualm was separating from Michael, but to my great surprise and infinite relief he decided to leave with me. It turned out that he, like me, was growing tired of the city’s downsides: yucky weather, murderous traffic, surreally high rents, ubiquitous roach infestations, and—let’s not forget—diseases.

Everyone said, “VD is no big deal. Just take some pills and in a week you’re good as new.” But I’d been infected twice (sweet, innocent little me!) and it made me feel filthy. The first time I’d gone to a city clinic where an exasperated woman demanded the names and contact information of everyone I’d slept with in the last six months. “You don’t want to be spreading disease, do you? They need to come in here for testing.” All I could do was shamefacedly stammer, “Uh . . . I forgot.” The second time, I went to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, a new place where they didn’t grill you about sex partners.

Sitting in the tiny waiting room I read the bulletin board to kill time. One notice concerned the appearance of a rare cancer in a few otherwise healthy young gay men. Normally found only among elderly males of Mediterranean descent, it manifested in purplish skin blotches. I felt a wave of terror. That very morning I’d woken up with a few purplish blotches on my legs! Ten miserable minutes later I showed them to a doctor who assured me I only had an extremely mild heat rash. I left with some pills for my other problem and forgot all about the obscure disease making its gay debut: Kaposi’s sarcoma.