Читать книгу Blackouts and Breakdowns - Mark Brennan Rosenberg - Страница 6

“Are you gay yet?” Jason asked me as I approached him on the corner of 72nd Street and Park Avenue. I had just moved to New York a few days before and Jason knew it was only a matter of time before I would come out of the closet. We had, after all, performed a medley of the songs of George M. Cohan together in high school chorus so I knew that he would not be surprised if I told him I was gay.

“Not yet,” I replied and then realized I meant to say “no.” Jason smiled at me. “I know when I do come out of the closet that I definitely do not want to be outed at a T.G.I.Friday’s like you were.” A few years earlier, our friend Valerie outed Jason in front of all of our friends at a T.G.I.Friday’s after rehearsal for a show we were doing at the time.

“Ha,” Jason laughed, “next time we are eating at a Bennigan’s, I will make sure that I let Valerie’s mother know what a huge vagina enthusiast she is.” We walked down the street and spoke about what our first days of college were like. Jason and I had been friends for a while in D.C., where we grew up and then moved to New York at the same time. I admired Jason because he was who he was and made no apologies for it. He was outed at a chain restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland, in front of a group of his peers and took it in stride. Nothing ever fazed him, but things were different in New York. I knew it was only a matter of time, before I joined Jason as an out homosexual, but I figured day four was a bit too early to come out and I was nervous about what the repercussions might be. Pretty much everyone in New York seemed gay, so I knew I would fit in immediately. I had moved to New York to go to school, but I also moved there to be myself. I was tired of D.C. and the way everyone always pretended to be something that they were not. I knew in New York, I could be whoever I wanted to be and would be accepted. As Jason and I discussed dorm life and how much we loved going to school in New York, he convinced me to go to a gay bar in the West Village where one of his friends from school was working.

“I don’t know if I want to go to a gay bar,” I said.

“Oh, whatever Mark. You are queerer than a three dollar bill,” Jason replied. “Just come. It does not mean that you are gay if you hang out in a gay bar. It will be fun.”

Jason and I made our way down to the piano bar in the West Village. On the way, we passed a Ruby Tuesdays and although I was hungry, we did not stop to eat, as I was afraid Jason would out me. Once at the piano bar, I realized it was like nothing I had ever seen in my life. The bar was in the basement of a building and was pretty dingy looking. Inside the bar, gay men of every age, stood around a piano singing show-tunes and having a gay old time. Everyone seemed so comfortable with themselves and everyone looked like they were having a great time. Jason and I walked in and Jason went directly to the bar.

“I’ll have a Jack and Coke,” he said. Jason, just barely out of high school and not old enough to legally buy cigarettes at this point, was given his drink as I watched in awe. “What do you want?” he asked me.

“Uh,” I was trying to think of something exotic to drink. I was playing with the grown ups now and needed to order something a little fancy. “I’ll have a whisky sour, with lots of cherries.”

The bartender winked at me and gave me my drink and bypassed looking at my fake ID. I was so excited to be in a gay bar, drinking and singing show-tunes. This was pretty much what I had imagined gay life in New York to be and I was thrilled to know that my dreams had actually come true. I loved how sophisticated everyone looked with cocktails in their hands and now I looked high-class too. I had only drank in secret before, hiding it from my parents at parties, and now, I felt like a true grown up. The glamour of it all amazed me and the allure of finally being who I knew I always wanted to be was right at my fingertips. But there was no way I was coming out tonight. Jason and I had a wonderful night, singing show-tunes and making new friends. Jason told me that the following night he was going to meet up with a guy named Chris for a date. Jason met Chris a few weeks before when he was looking for housing. I was happy for Jason but a little jealous that it seemed so easy for him to get a date. Considering I had not even come out of the closet at this point, a date seemed out of the question, but I was hoping that some day I would be lucky enough to go on a same-sex date. I was out of D.C. and living in a city that was dripping with decadence where everyone had the savior faire of an aristocrat. I thought that I totally fit in; that is, until I returned to my college dorm room that night. How could I fit in with all of my glamorous new friends if I was stuck in my tiny college dorm room with my crazy drug-dealing roommate? I figured I would just ride it out until senior year of college, when I would graduate and become an amazing Broadway superstar. Even though I could not sing, dance or act, I determined a career in the theatre was just what my future held.

After a few short weeks, Jason and I quickly became the hottest things to hit the West Village piano bar circuit since the sheet music for Hair became available to the public. Men our fathers age, or older, would buy us drinks by the dozens and Jason and I sang our hearts out for anyone who would listen. It was a fabulous way to usher in our new lifestyle. However, after weeks of singing show-tunes in piano bars in the West Village with men over twice my age, I had still not come out of the closet, as if at this point, I really needed to.

One night, after a few cocktails, Jason approached me:

“Are you gay now?” he asked.

“Soon,” I replied.

“Well, my friend Greg from school thinks you are cute,” he whispered in my ear, “go over and talk to him.”

From across the room, I began to size Greg up. He was pretty cute from what I could tell. He had red hair and a dorky smile and was just about perfect for what I was looking for. Before I had even come out of the closet, I already had a type: dorks. I love dorks so much. They are so cute with their little glasses and stubby little hands and are usually freaks in bed. They also really come in handy if you need tech support for just about anything. I looked at Greg from across the bar and gave him a smile. He winked back at me and I walked over to talk to him.

“Hey,” I said as I put out my hand to shake his, “I’m Mark.”

“Like Mark from Rent?” he replied.

This was already the gayest conversation I had ever had up until this point and he had only said four words to me, but we were in a piano bar, so what was I to expect?

“Yes,” I replied, “like Mark from Rent.”

“I loved Rent,” he said. We looked at each other with blank faces for about twelve seconds. Was this as far as our conversation was going to go?

“Oh,” he then replied, “I’m Greg”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Greg.”

“Where are you from?” he asked

“D.C.” I said nervously. “Well…actually, I am from Maryland, like right outside of D.C., but, I think it’s easier to tell people that I am from D.C. because no one has ever heard of where I am really from. It’s just like two minutes outside of D.C., totally not far, but no one has ever heard of it.” Had I gone completely retarded? I was so nervous about my first potential gay hook-up that I was standing there giving him a verbal tour of the D.C. Metropolitan Area. “Where are you from?”

“Michigan, a small town no one has ever heard of,” Greg replied.

“Oh,” I said as I stood there and stared at the floor. I had no idea what gay guys spoke about upon first meeting, so we just kind of stared at each other. Across the room, a big forty-year old hairy queen was belting out “Some People” and Greg and I shifted our attention to him.

As the queen was reaching the bridge, Greg looked over at me and smiled. He was adorable. If I were to hook up with him tonight, I could get some action from a guy and have him fix my computer in the morning. It was win-win.

“But, not ROOOOOSSSSSEEEEE!” the queen belted. Everyone cheered as the gayest man on earth finished singing one of the gayest songs on earth. After the clapping subsided, Greg turned to me:

“I was Tulsa in the Kalamazoo production of Gypsy a few years back.”

“Nice,” I replied, “I was the Mayor in the Bethesda, Maryland production of The Music Man.”

Then, nothing. Conversation stopped again. Greg and I were both fresh out of the closet and neither one of us knew the proper etiquette of the hook-up. Apparently, listing off all of the community theatre productions we had done in high school would suffice for now. A few weeks later, I would come to realize that there is no need for words at all when trying to get a guy to hook-up with you. Now, things were virginal and needed to be taken slowly.

“So…” I said, “where do you live?”

“Upper East Side,” Greg replied.

“Nice,” I replied.

“Do you want to come check out my place?”

I was not really interested in his place but was interested in him so I agreed to check out his place. I later learned that “check my place out” is gay code for “let’s get it on.” As I was leaving the bar with Greg, Jason pulled me aside.

“I knew it!” Jason said.

“What?” I asked.

“I knew you were gay.”

“Jesus Christ Jason,” I replied, “I went to a summer camp for the performing arts where everyone called me Natalie because they thought I looked like Natalie from The Facts of Life, and I allowed them to do it. All the while performing in a production of Sugarbabies in nursing homes all across the Catskills. If that isn’t a fucking fag, then I don’t know what is. It doesn’t take a fucking genius to call a spade a spade.” Baby’s first gay tangent. I was making progress. Jason smiled as Greg and I left the bar, headed for the elusive Upper East Side.

Greg and I got into a cab and went up to his place on the Upper East Side. Once inside, we made the usual small talk:

“I remember when I was doing Bye, Bye Birdie at a dinner theatre in Rockville,” I said as Greg poured me a glass of Royal Vodka into a paper cup. “I got so nervous when I was on stage doing hurkies, I ended up falling on my ass!”

“That’s hilarious!” Greg said as he handed me an alcohol filled paper cup. “I once peed myself when I was doing a production of The Sound of Music as a child. It was super embarrassing, but I was only six.”

We both laughed. I don’t know if we were laughing at the fact that we had both humiliated ourselves in front of hundreds of people or that we were having the most ridiculous conversation two men had ever had but we laughed nonetheless. As the laughing subsided, Greg leaned in and kissed me thus beginning the most awkward hook-up that has ever taken place. Two eighteen year old guys who had never hooked up with someone of the same sex before attempting to be sexy. The result: something that would have been a classic episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos.

“I really like him,” I said into the phone the next day.

Jason, who was relieved I had finally done something about my homosexuality proclaimed: “I am so happy that you finally came out of the closet. I knew it was only a matter of time, but damn did that take forever.”

“I think he may be the one,” I said.

“Mark, you hardly know him. You just hooked up, see how it goes.”

“I don’t know Jason, I am pretty interested in him,” I replied. I was acting like a straight up lesbian. I already had plans of moving in with him and raising his children.

“Just see where it goes, Mark. Don’t rush anything. You are just coming out of the closet,” Jason said. Then suddenly, the topic changed back to drinking, “hey, I know, why don’t we go out tonight? My father just gave me money for books, we can use it to get wasted tonight.” Jason decided my coming out was a good reason for us to get hammered together. Soon it would become tradition that everything from a good grade to a hangnail was reason to get hammered together.

“I can’t, I have to study. I have exams coming up,” I replied. School was definitely getting in the way of my social activities, but that was what I was in New York to do in the first place so I had to put forth some effort.

“Fine,” Jason said, defeated. “Call me this weekend, and we’ll go out.” I hung up with Jason and got to work.

A few days later, I was beginning to worry because I had not heard from Greg. It had been three days and I had not so much as heard a peep from him on instant messenger and began wondering what was going on. Finally, after five days of not hearing from him, I gave him a call, but it went straight to voicemail.

“Hey Greg, it’s Mark from the other night,” I said into his voicemail box. “You know, like Mark from Rent, ha, ha, ha.” What the hell is wrong with me? “Just calling to see if you wanted to get together sometime soon. Maybe we could catch a show or something. I would love to see Chicago or even Annie Get Your Gun. You know, that was the first show I was ever in and now Bernadette Peters is doing it on Broadway. I love the story of Annie Oakley.” I would continue with the rest of the message I left him, but I am afraid it gets a little too embarrassing even for me. I had no idea what I was doing so I continued rambling on until his voicemail cut me off. I could not remember whether or not I told him to call me, so I called him back and left another message reminding him to call me back. After a few days of not hearing from him, I began to worry so I called Jason and the two of us met at our favorite piano bar.

“I don’t get it,” I said as I sipped my Manhattan. I had upgraded from Whiskey Sours to Manhattans in a matter of weeks. “Why hasn’t he called me back?”

Jason looked at me as if I was a child who was just told the Easter Bunny wasn’t real. “Mark, honey,” he said, cocktail in hand, “I’ve been doing this a while and I have to let you in on a secret. What you did last weekend was a meaningless hook-up. Greg is not going to call you back because he was not interested in anything more than a hook-up. That’s how we gays do things.”

“Wait…what?” I replied.

“Mark, it was a hook-up. Get over it!”

Jason and I drank our cares away. We drank Goldschlager and White Russians for the rest of the night and I got sick off of alcohol for the first time. After getting loaded that night, I woke up the next day vowing to get over Greg and move on. He was my first hook-up after all and I felt it was going to take some time to get over. However, Greg had left me with a little present that was going to forever ingrain him in my memory.

“You have scabies,” Dr. Huxtable said to me the next day. My doctor in New York barred a striking resemblance to Bill Cosby and every time he walked in the room I thought he was going to do a stupid dance or offer me Jell-O.

“What the hell is scabies?” I asked as I itched every inch of my body.

“It’s like body lice,” Dr. Huxtable said with a smile, although I did not find his response charming or funny. “I will give you a cream that will get rid of it. You have to go home and wash everything. Every towel, every sheet, every article of clothing must be washed. Clean everything and use the cream I give you and it will go away in no time.”

I shrugged. Of course the first time I hook-up with a guy I get an STD. Just my luck.

“Just use the cream to make key lime pie,” Dr. Huxtable then said.

“What?” I asked quizzically.

“Just use the cream and you’ll be fine,” he said.

“Oh.”

I sat and stared at the doctor wondering what Phylicia Rashad was doing with her career. How had I come to this? That afternoon, I called Greg and told him to go fuck himself for giving me scabies and to lose my number, which he apparently already had done as I had not heard from him in two weeks now. And so, the Great Scabies Debacle of 2000 kicked into high gear.

I went home and washed everything in my dorm room. As I was doing this, my straight pot-dealing roommate looked on. Probably because he was high. I washed everything and used the cream and felt relieved. However, the next morning, when I woke up, I saw that my roommate was itching all over.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” my roommate asked.

“What’s up?”

“I am itchy all over.”

Oh shit, I thought. I had somehow given him scabies. Then I remembered when we first moved into our dorm room, I commented on the fact that we both had the exact same towels and we had better be careful not to mix them up. Apparently, someone had and now my roommate had scabies as well. But, it didn’t end there. He had given it to his girlfriend, and she had given it to her roommate Meegan (pronounced Meegan. Not Megan. Upon meeting her, I told her that I thought her name was ridiculous and that I would be referring to her simply as Megan or Sara. I thought she looked more like a Sara anyway). For a week, the four of us sat around my dorm room, scratching ourselves like monkeys in a cage. Everyone wondered where the mysterious scabies outbreak originated, but I kept mum. I did not need everyone knowing I had slept with a dirty boy on the Upper East Side.

After the scabies outbreak calmed down, my best friend from high school, Evelyn came up to New York to visit. It was time for me to come out of the closet to her. I always suspected that Evelyn knew I was gay and was just waiting for me to come out, but nothing prepared me for her response to me coming out of the closet.

“So, I got us tickets to go see Chicago,” I said as Evelyn and I were walking down Broadway with the lights of Times Square upon us, “oh, and I’m gay now.”

Evelyn stopped dead in her tracks.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m gay now.”

“Gay?”

Apparently Evelyn had forgotten how to speak English in the two months we had been away from each other.

“How are you gay?” she asked.

Had she forgotten the night that we drove around D.C. singing every single lyric to the entire CD of ABBA Gold?

“I’m gay, Evelyn,” I said. “We all knew it was only a matter of time before I came out of the closet.” Evelyn’s face went lax. I could see she was extremely disappointed by this dramatic revelation. “Seriously Evelyn, the signs were always there. For God’s sake, for our tenth grade English project on Othello I wrote a script for a play and based it off of the characters on All My Children. How is that not the gayest thing anyone has ever done?”

“I know Mark, but I thought,” Evelyn paused. “I thought you would always be my back-up guy.”

“Come again?”

“My back up guy,” she said again, “you know, if I couldn’t find a husband by the time I was thirty, you would be there for me.”

“Well, let me just put my life on the backburner and wait twelve years to see if you do or do not get married.”

“Oh, Mark, you know what I mean.”

After about an hour of explaining to Evelyn that I not only liked musical theatre, Britney Spears, soap operas and ABBA, but also dick, she finally got the message. Since then Evelyn has become the perfect fag-hag. Accompanying me to weddings, galas and pretty much any family event I needed her to go to with me. Coming out to Evelyn was an easy segue into coming out to my parents, which was made even easier by my sister who decided to come out the same night. That was a memorable Thanksgiving for everyone in the Rosenberg clan.

Freshman year of college was a really enlightening experience. Not only was I exploring the many possibilities of what academia had to offer (i.e. beer funnels, beer pong, etc.), I was also on a personal mission to try just about anything anyone put in front of me. I had gotten over my fear of hooking up with a guy, and although I contracted an STD, I was no longer afraid. After that, I tried every type of booze imaginable and then moved on to bigger and better things. November of my freshman year of college, I had the pleasure of meeting my new BFF, Alex who would become a staple in my life for the next year or so. Alex and I were very much alike. He lived on the sixteenth floor of my dorm building and the two of us quickly bonded over our mutual love of Ace of Base. We became fast friends and began hanging out almost every evening. We had even found a new hang out, Club Blue.

One night after we had been pre-gaming in Alex’s dorm room we headed down to Club Blue with full intentions of getting blackout drunk. Upon entering we did the usual shooters and began flirting with guys for free drinks. We were eighteen and poor college students, so we had to work with what we had. I ended up befriending a really hot guy, whose name I do not remember, so I will refer to him as “the hot guy.” We were flirting pretty hardcore until he pulled me aside and took me to the bathroom.

As we entered the bathroom, he emptied his pockets and pulled out a small plastic baggie and a rolled up twenty dollar bill.

“What are you doing?” I asked the hot guy.

“Coke,” he replied.

“Oh,” I said as I watched him put the twenty-dollar bill into his left nostril and snort up the cocaine he had laid out on the toilet paper holder. Suddenly, the allure of doing coke was lost on me. It wasn’t nearly as glamorous as when they did it in Boogie Nights and Julianne Moore flipped out on Roller Girl and told her she would be her mother.

“Want some?” the hot guy asked as he whipped his nose.

“Ummm…ok,” I replied. And why not? What is the worst that could happen? “Can you just give me just a second?” I asked. The hot guy left me alone in the bathroom to contemplate whether or not to do the drugs that sat before me. I really wanted to look cool in front of the hot guy, but was nervous about doing coke. I then wondered what life would be like if I started doing drugs. Was I to end up like a junkie or someone fabulous like Liza Minnelli who was pretty much coked up throughout the 70’s? As I pondered what do, an apparition appeared in the bathroom.

“Say no to drugs,” the figure said.

I could not see who was standing before me. I had so much to drink that I was not sure if I was hallucinating or seeing a real person. As the figure came closer, I knew exactly who it was.

“Say no to drugs!” the figure said again.

I wiped my eyes and saw a little old lady in a red pantsuit approaching me.

“Damn you Nancy Reagan!” I yelled. She had come to me again. Nancy first came to me in a vision when I smoked weed for the first time, and now she was back.

“I warned you that pot was the gateway drug, and look at you,” Nancy said as she gestured toward the pile of cocaine that was sitting on the toilet paper holder. “Now you are about to take cocaine. Shame on you Mark.”

“But Nancy, I really want to hook up with that hot guy,” I said. Surely Nancy Reagan understood the ins and outs of gay life in New York. She was kind of like a fag-hag with all of those power suits.

“Oh, you homosexuals and your drugs,” she said with a laugh. “I have come to so many of you and no one ever listens. Look at what happened to Paul Lynde for Christ’s sake!”

“Maybe you are right Nancy,” I said. Then suddenly, I remembered why I had not listened to Nancy Reagan in the first place. “Wait a minute, Nance. I remember why I didn’t listen to you before. You stole Ronald Reagan away from my beloved Jane Wyman, star of Falcon Crest, the best show ever on television. I’m not listening to a word you say. Don’t tell me not to drugs after you went around stealing another woman’s man!” And with that I took the rolled up twenty dollar bill and snorted the cocaine.

“Remember my dear, crack is wack,” Nancy said.

“Whatever,” I replied, “your husband’s administration was a joke!” And with that Nancy disappeared.

While this very special episode of Diff’rent Stokes was taking place in the club bathroom, the hot guy was outside knocking on the door.

“You OK in there?” the hot guy asked.

I opened the door and replied:

“Yeah, I am fine. Just hashing out a few things with Nancy Reagan.”

He looked dumbfounded. “Pretty good shit, huh?” he asked.

Good shit indeed. We partied the night away. Cocaine was fabulous for me because while taking it, I could drink as much alcohol as I wanted without getting drunk or sick. It was like a miracle drug and I wondered why more people didn’t do it. That is until the next morning.

I awoke the next morning wondering what I had done wrong to deserve feeling the way I felt. I felt as if someone had dropped a ton of bricks on my head and left me for dead. My head was spinning and I felt as if I my heart was going to stop at any moment. I told myself that I was never going to drink or do drugs ever again, but that night rolled around and it was time to party again. Alex and I had cleverly decided that from then on we were going to have themed nights of going out. Every night of the week we would dress up in a different theme. It seemed to be the perfect way to try and find a new boyfriend. Heroin chic was a favorite, where we would temporarily dye our hair black, put black eyeliner on and tight jeans and look like crack heads. For whatever reason, we thought this look was attractive; but, after a while, I realized we didn’t even need the makeup anymore. We were pretty much crack heads.

One night before Christmas during freshman year of college, Alex and I decided that it would be fun to try acid. I had done mushrooms in high school and was told that the effects were similar but acid was even more potent. The two of us went to a club and danced and drank and had a gay old time. After a few hours of dancing, Alex put a tab of acid onto my tongue and I immediately cased the club for Nancy Reagan. I couldn’t find her, but I did see a drag queen in a red pillbox hat that bared a striking resemblance to her. I guess Nancy had given up on me – I was a lost cause now. I had reached the point of no return, although I did tell myself I would never smoke crack or shoot up heroin. At least I still had some boundaries.

The night we tripped on acid was like taking a trip on an emotional rollercoaster on which I care to never ride again. A club promoter named Stephan came up to me and tried to kiss me and his face turned into a bat then he tried to swallow me whole. Then, the walls began to melt and I tried to lick them because I thought they had turned into milkshakes. Finally, I was so hungry when I got home that I made myself some macaroni and cheese that turned into worms and I hid under my bed for a solid hour until I thought it was safe to come out.

The next day, I met up with Jason for a few drinks at our piano bar.

“Where the hell have you been?” Jason asked.

“Having visions of Nancy Reagan and trying every drug imaginable,” I replied.

“What?” he asked.

“Never mind,” I said. All of the experimentation had taken its toll on me. “I don’t feel well.”

“Drink this,” Jason said as he waved a martini in my face. “Vodka is good for the heart.”

“I can’t do drugs anymore. It’s only been a month and I feel like a junkie already,” I said. My Jewish guilt wouldn’t even allow me to be a drug addict without feeling horrible about it.

“Just take a break,” Jason said. “Just drink. Drinking is fun and it won’t kill you.”

Why do I always think everything everyone tells me is the truth?

“You’re right!” I proclaimed, “drinking won’t kill me, will it?” Just ruin every relationship I ever had from that point on and force me into making the worst decisions any human could possibly make.

“Cheers to you, Mark,” Jason said. “You’ve overcome your drug addiction.” We clinked glasses and both sipped our martinis.

“Wow, it’s so easy to get yourself off of drugs. It’s a wonder why more people can’t do it,” I said as I was probably still tripping on the acid from the night before.

“Well, never say never Mark. You know marijuana is a drug.”

“Really?”

“So is cocaine.”

“Let’s just say I won’t do any drugs that don’t come from mother earth. Since you have to grow weed and cocoa plants, I think that is a safer bet, don’t you?” I asked.

“It’s a lot healthier for you. God only knows what people put in those acid tabs.”

Thus my philosophy on life began and spanned throughout the next decade. My first few months in New York had not only taught me that it was OK to be gay, but also OK to financially support every drug dealer and bartender in the New York metropolitan area for the next eight years.