After two more hours of this I finally pull myself together and get in the shower, and then after I’m dressed I ask if I can get another line for the road. Sure, he says, as long as I can get some more action. This must be how hookers get violent.
Can I see you again, he asks when he drops me off, and when I finally get home I’m a total mess. Polly’s getting dressed for the girl block—are you okay, she says. She’s wearing the ratty blonde wig with the black Victoria’s Secret slip dress and those wobbly heels, and for a minute I think about how funny it is that now we’re both turning tricks and dammit I need a drink but the T’s going to close soon and I’m trying not to drive on drugs anymore.
Polly says she was going to take a cab anyway, it’ll be her treat—two cocktails at Luxor and I’m feeling much better, yes in spite of those bitches trying to throw shade—honey, you’re going to have to keep throwing because we’re not catching it. I go over to Jacques with Polly, and some guy comes right over to me and says how do I know what’s in your pants?
He won’t leave me alone—I’ll give you twenty, he says, I’ll give you twenty just to see.
A hundred is my starting point, I say, and he says what are you drinking? A Stoli madras—and one for my friend.
Apparently Jacques doesn’t serve Stoli—I can’t tell if this guy’s lying or just cheap, I mean I know he’s cheap but I drink the cocktail anyway, and then he says I’ll give you twenty just to see, like he hasn’t said that twice already. Oh, well—cab fare, I guess. We go in the bathroom, and then I leave.
The next day I’m rushing out of the house to get to Bread & Circus, drive a few blocks but then realize I forgot my grocery bags so I go back, run up the stairs to my room and there’s Champagne with an electric screwdriver, taking the lock off my door.
Oh, she says, I didn’t expect you to come back so soon. I’ll put this back on the door.
I don’t even know what to say, and I need to get broccoli and tofu because there’s nothing in the refrigerator so I leave the house anyway, and then when I get home I look around my room to see if anything’s gone—I have no idea, really, so I go upstairs and knock on Sham’s door, and when she opens I say I’m just going to look around and see if there’s anything of mine in here.
Champagne looks at me like she’s some damsel in distress but I start rummaging through her drawers anyway, sure enough there’s another one of my T-shirts—look at this, I say, this one has my initials on the label, and I hold it up to her face. She actually looks scared—I can’t help thinking that she’s been so fucked up by her father that all she can do is put on airs and use people and steal for no reason, and I don’t know what to do with this sudden blast of empathy so I just say listen, you can keep the T-shirt if you really want it, it’s only twelve dollars, but please stop stealing from me, it’s ridiculous.
Then Joey calls and she says you’ll never guess what happened to Elana Delano. She got bashed. Right in front of her new apartment. There was blood and everything. She’s moving back in with her parents. In Woburn.
Woburn—are you serious? Why is she moving?
Alexa, she just got bashed. In front of her apartment. She shouldn’t have moved to Roxbury.
What’s wrong with Roxbury? I like the part of Roxbury where she lived.
I’m just glad I live in the South End.
Whatever.
Do you want to get cocktails?
I’m depressed.
Maybe you need cocktails.
What’s Elana’s number?
You can’t call her—she’s in the hospital.
What—are you kidding?
No, I told you it was serious.
Let’s bring her flowers.
We can’t visit. She’s not out to her parents.
Are you serious? And she’s moving back in with them? I need cocktails.
In the morning someone’s causing a big scene in the kitchen—when I first moved in I was worried about living with all these meat eaters, but I’m usually the only one who cooks. But today I can smell the bacon grease from my room, and then I hear Sham-boom’s giggle and it sounds like everyone is in there together. Sure enough she’s saying Miss One, it’s what a mother does—oh you bitch you bitch you fucking bitch.
Luckily I fall back asleep but when I wake up I go in the kitchen and it’s like every pot in the house is lying on the counter, filled with bacon grease. How the fuck am I going to cook? Finally I take all the dirty pots and throw them in a garbage bag and put them outside on the porch, then I write a note that says clean your fucking dishes, and when Polly comes home I say I can’t deal with this anymore, we have to move out.
Polly says she wants to make the roommate flyer so she draws the two of us with the Boston skyline, searching for a place in JP or as far from assimilation nation as we can get—honey, you should make comics.
The next trick wants me to fuck him with a dildo and that’s definitely easier than staying hard in a condom—it kind of feels like an anatomy lesson watching how much of this huge thing he can take, and then of course he starts with the porn talk, someone should ban that shit though it’s pretty funny the way he keeps saying yeah, fuck me with that big black cock, fuck me with that black horse meat, fuck me with that black monster donkey dick—definitely better than subjecting an actual black person to his racist shit.
Two days later and time for the Four Seasons—I grab a crystal from one of the chandeliers—every lady of the evening needs a crystal collection. So then, just down the street at the Copley Plaza, another crystal. After that, I get that rare trick who’s actually hot, a student at Northeastern, or no, not Northeastern, some technical school called WIT. Speaking of wit, he says he’s straight. He comes too fast—honey, you’ll never hear me say that again.
I go to the Fens. It’s really windy, but there’s something about how the reeds can become a shelter even if there’s so much mud and I almost fall right into the water—whoops, wrong way. But then there’s this guy pulling me to him from behind and when I turn around he’s got that crazed look in his eyes that makes me crazed too but it’s too muddy here so I grab his hand and then we’re out in the open and suddenly there’s only his tongue, cigarettes and beer and something like vomit if vomit can be soothing, and he stumbles back, I almost fall, but really he’s walking me hugging over to one of the trees with multiple trunks, kind of out in the open but it doesn’t matter all I want is his body on mine our bodies together, grinding up against the tree it’s like we’re all one thing and when he zips up his pants to flee I sit down on the bench between trees to catch my breath and try to figure out how even the Prudential Tower looks pretty from here.
The next trick is South End realness—there’s a picture of Ronald Reagan in her bedroom. Actually that’s beyond South End realness. That’s just beyond. Usually I try not to get fucked, but I guess this time I can’t avoid it. Afterward I’m walking down the street and suddenly it’s like I’m going to shit my pants so I rush into some bar—oh, it’s Fritz’s, the sports bar, which might be the only gay bar in Boston that I haven’t been to. While I’m in the bathroom I get a page, and when I get to the pay phone outside it turns out the guy is staying at the Chandler Inn—where is that exactly?
Upstairs from Fritz’s—talk about convenience. I go back to the bathroom to finish shitting and then I grab a cocktail, and when I get upstairs this guy looks shocked. I figure it’s because I got there so fast but maybe it’s something about my hair because that’s what he’s looking at. He already handed me the money so I’m undressing him and it turns out he’s a good kisser—his mouth is so mentholated that it opens up my sinuses. He’s actually pretty sexy for some guppy, sucking my dick right away and I’m starting to think I should have a cocktail right before every trick. Or right before everything.
And then about five minutes later there’s someone knocking at the door and the guy jumps up and says oh, I forgot to tell you.
Turns out it’s his boyfriend, and we have to
get dressed really fast and pretend we just met at the bar downstairs. Are you serious?
His boyfriend looks confused. I’m sure I look confused. But then somehow we’re all on the bed together and I get to do that thing where I don’t know who’s touching me I can just close my eyes and lie back, and when we’re done they want to take me downstairs for a cocktail—okay, I can’t refuse, even if it is a sports bar, and when I head to the bathroom the first guy follows me and tells me I handled that really well, hands me an extra hundred—and honey, I know it sounds like I’m making a lot of money, I mean I guess I am making a lot of money but we all know it won’t last.
The other night I did way too much coke to get out of a K-hole in the kitchen and even after smoking a bunch of pot I was lying in bed gritting my teeth and maybe I was actually asleep when the phone started ringing but I didn’t realize that at first so I picked it up. It was Melissa and she was in a panic, telling me she couldn’t sleep because at night her father was pacing in the hall, she could hear his breath on the other side of the door. And then she kept almost saying what she wanted to say, what I’ve been waiting for her to say, and I was trying to wait a little longer except then she switched topics and started telling me that what hurts her the most is that she knows I don’t want the same thing from our relationship as she does.
The irony is that right before that I really felt close to her, so close it was like I was there with her in that hallway, waiting for her father, trying to figure out what to do. But then she started going on about how she wants more from me than I’m able to give, and we’ve already had this conversation I don’t know how many times, but now it’s even more annoying since we live across the country from one another so what the fuck am I supposed to do? At some point she asked why I wasn’t saying much, and the truth is that I was trying to listen. But then I realized how high I still was, lying in bed feeling my body floating and maybe that was why it was hard to pay attention. So I said I know I should have told you this before, but I’m really high. And Melissa got really quiet, so quiet I could hear the humming of the phone. Then she said: Call me sometime when you’re not high.
When I got off the phone I felt like a terrible terrible friend, maybe not even a friend just some drugged-out mess and when the hell was I really going to sleep so I started rummaging through my drawer for Xanax even though doxepin helps more but I’m trying not to take that too much so I don’t get addicted. So I snorted half a Xanax, swallowed another one and got back in bed—talk about floating on the ceiling and how can I still be this wired, how much coke did I do last night, maybe I should just get up, oh, wait, yes, finally, yes, thank you.
The next trick kind of looks like Santa Claus except his beard is even bigger and I hate beards because they remind me of my father. I guess if I close my eyes the hair is kind of soft, not scratchy like I expected, and it almost feels comforting in his arms, like I’m a little kid. Except that just when I start to relax he says he wants to fuck me—are you kidding? Then he wants to know if Tyler is my real name.
Speaking of real names, one night when Polly and I were over at Sage and Juniper’s, and some ad came on TV for Hooked on Phonics, they revealed a very practical secret. It turns out that if you call the Hooked on Phonics 1-800 number, but don’t say anything when they answer, and then stay on the phone after the operator hangs up, you get a dial tone and then you can call anywhere you want for free. For some reason it only works at the pay phones on Newbury Street, in front of the garage just down the street from Urban Outfitters. So here I am, in the ice storm, asking Joanna for advice about where to meet queers with politics in Boston, even though she’s never been to Boston, and she says what about a punk show? Are you kidding? I don’t even think there would be any queers at a punk show in Boston. Besides, I’m done with punk shows—maybe if they just played “God Save the Queen” over and over, and Lady Dionne was there turning and turning with her fan—did I tell you about Lady Dionne? She’s the black queen with a big lace fan spelling out the letters of her name, and all the other black queens at Avalon bow down. And the club kids, or at least the ones who know—I mean we know she’s the queen of queens. Oh, I love how she turns so slowly with that fan like you all can just die now, yes, die.
The other day I ran into Lady Dionne on Boylston, and she was like girl, what are you doing out? And I was like girl, what are you doing out? And then I walked her to some bar on the rich end of Newbury, and on the way all these assholes kept yelling nice tits, and I didn’t really understand what was going on because why the hell was everyone obsessed with Lady Dionne’s tits and then some guy came over and said which one’s the man, and which one’s the woman? And he really looked like he was going to punch one of us, just like that, until Lady Dionne pulled me over and we stared him down. And afterward she said child, you have to admit it, we do make a stunning couple.
Speaking of turning it out, let me tell you about Joey’s heels. Yes, heels. She debuted them on our last visit to Avalon, or not the last visit but the one before—black heels, almost stilettos. They don’t exactly make her tall, but they do make her taller. Preppy boy working a raincoat, in stilettos—Boston, watch out.
Then there’s the trick who just wants to talk about Ab Fab—he says this is his favorite episode so I try to pay attention. He keeps rewinding the part where Edina or Patsy or whoever’s in the zebra-print coat leans over to some snooty gay couple and says, “Marlena and Judy rolled into one for you, is it?” I can’t tell if he’s laughing at the gay couple, or at Edina and Patsy. At least he drinks Stoli.
The funny part is when I walk out on the street in everybody’s favorite neighborhood—yes, the South End—and I’m trying to figure out who’s worse, the gay people who look at me like I’m trash, the straight couples who look at me like I’m going to steal their unborn child or the straight guys who look at me like they want me dead. Of course there’s some baseball cap realness tragedy staring at me and I figure it’s just the usual straight boy getting ready to beat his meat so I keep walking but then he keeps saying hey, hey, and it turns out he recognizes me from Avalon. Tells me he just smoked coke out of a TV antenna at Evan Aubergine’s house, Evan’s in love with him so at least he gets free drugs—he’s in business school and he has to get through it somehow.
I’m not sure what this guy wants from me until he says can I suck your dick? Just like that—kind of funny and now I notice he’s hot in that tragic way, and then we’re upstairs in his apartment filled with puffy tan sofas and Orientalist art.
But did I mention that now that Joey and Polly and I have listened to that Michael Sheehan mix about fifty times, we’re not sure if it’s Traci Lords saying “faggots” or if Miss Sheehan is just mixing that in, and honey, that would be genius. I’m tempted to say that would be cunt, but can you really say cunt without being a misogynist asshole? I remember when I used to think that any guy who used the word bitch was someone to avoid, but then in San Francisco I realized that when a fag called a straight boy a bitch that was one of the most beautiful reads in the world, and I saw the way when one queen said bitch to another it could be a gesture of love, and could it be that way between fags and dykes too—I don’t know if I’ll ever figure that one out because dykes in Boston won’t even talk to me. But anyway one night after Avalon, Elana Delano was giving me props for my outfit and she said Alexa, you are cunt, and that was like the best compliment in the world—I miss Elana.
Oops, watch out for this K-hole on the stairwell, I’m just going to stay here a while, okay? Yes, it’s after-hours at our house again and now the X is the big flat tablets that are literally yellow so you rush to the bathroom to vomit, too much heroin, I mean everyone else rushes to the bathroom to vomit but luckily for me it’s just diarrhea though some people actually like the vomiting, heroin for sure, so I only take a half and it just makes me feel like I’m caving in until I do a bunch of coke so then I’m annoyed and edgy until finally too much K so here I am on the stairs. Maybe I’ll jus
t stay here for the rest of my life as everyone walks by, seems like they’re all in a rush tonight and wait, there’s Elana Delano.
Elana, I say, but it’s not Elana, it’s some guy with her eyebrows who looks over with some blank sneer that I recognize from somewhere, where am I again, oh, this carpet, I love the feel of this carpet, where did we get this carpet? Okay, maybe there is some ecstasy in this ecstasy, my head a swirling tunnel until all the colors pull away into cat’s cradle. Then diamond shapes like a video game version of backgammon and that’s when I realize I can make it do whatever I want—glow-in-the-dark bouncing balls, rainbow spiral splatter paint, a big field filled with fluorescent-orange trees and pink cats with spider eyes and I’m dancing inside the swirly pattern projecting onto the walls I’m pulsating into tiny spaces and then expanding in light onstage until a black background clears everything and then I’m on top of someone’s shiny car in a rainstorm no it’s a cave filled with shimmering stalactites the beach in all that sun and my arms flailing around like I’m fitting myself into myself until there’s Polly biting her nails and saying Alexa. Alexa. Alexa, are you there, we’ve got something special.
Oh, Polly’s touching me and when I open my eyes there’s Elana again—no, not Elana, that awful guy with the plucked eyebrows, but where’s Polly? Oh, right next to him except her eyes look so far away, is that really Polly, staring at me like I’m in a laboratory, what’s going on?
Polly says it again: Let’s go to the bathroom. For something special.
Oh, something special, okay, I guess I can get up, as long as the carpet doesn’t swallow me, I’ll just hold the railing, wait this is fun, no, slower, okay, you go ahead. And then when I finally get to the bathroom I’m making faces in the mirror to make sure that’s me while Polly’s sitting at the vanity with Elana who’s not Elana cutting lines but I don’t want any coke and Polly says Alexa, it’s not coke—it’s crystal.
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