“You get my room. I’m gonna be in London all summer.”
I surveyed the bedroom, with its insane leopard print curtains, king size velvet bed and zebra-striped tufted stools. I wondered if I would be able to sleep in there. The assortment of medieval weapons and torture devices hanging on the rear wall gave me a passing shiver.
“What was that?” Gia asked.
“Goose walked over my grave.”
Brennan and I left Gia’s apartment and headed up to Christopher Street. He had an aborted year at NYU film school back in ‘83. He knew the West Village pretty well.
We started at the Stonewall Inn. Apparently, this was where a bunch of angry drag queens fought the police, making it possible for us to march in gay parades. There was more to it, but that’s what I understood. The Monster was a piano bar upstairs and a tacky disco downstairs. They recently started charging a cover, so we don’t go in. There was Marie’s Crisis, which had been one of Brennan’s favorites. Night was falling, but not many people were out. AIDS hit this neighborhood like a Beirut bomb. There was a for sale sign on the Ninth Circle Steakhouse.
“I’m hungry. Is the steak any good?”
“They don’t serve steak.” It took a while for that to sink in. We wandered west until we reached Christopher Street Books. This was a dirty bookstore. In Boston, you had to be 21 and they carded you. In New York, it was 18. We went in.
The books were all arranged on rotating racks with signs on top. “Bondage/S&M”, “Rough Trade”, “Cops/Cowboys” “Truckers/Young” and they were filled to overflowing with X-rated gay pulp fiction. The covers were mostly drawings, but a few had photos of tanned men in a tasteful embrace.
There were racks of magazines like Blueboy, Mandate, Playgirl, Playguy, Inches, Stallion, and IT: In Touch for men. I had never seen this much gay porn in one location. And I could buy it! I spent ten dollars on a novel called “Bunkhouse Buddies” by Peter Schutes and a back issue of Blueboy featuring an interview with gay porn’s hottest real-life couple, Leo & Lance. The plain brown bag burned in my hand until I dropped it in the Manic Panic bag. The shame was intense. I was a virgin, and this was all I had to prove that there were lots of other men like me.
We hiked back towards the East Village on 8th Street then St. Mark’s. At Tompkins Square, we turned right and walked to 7th and Avenue A: The Pyramid. It was straight night, so we backtracked to Boybar. A 1960s gay cult film called Pink Narcissus played on the TV screens embedded in the walls. The music was better than the crap you hear at the Palladium. It was the best of pop. Pete Burns sang “You Spin Me Round” and the Cocteau Twins burped sugar hiccups. I didn’t know anyone, so I watched the film and pretended to be as bored as everyone else was trying to be. That was New York attitude. It was a brick wall that prevented people from being bombarded by the overwhelming masses of people everywhere.
It was still Friday night and I had already scored a job and an apartment. Brennan said we should call Fleur and crash on her floor as planned. As we called from the free payphone, I saw Doreen.
She jumped up and down, she was so happy to see me. She invited us both back to the apartment to watch Christiane F and take ecstasy. Brennan politely declined, but I said “yes.”
Brennan tapped me on the shoulder. “Fleur wants to talk to you.”
I took the phone. Fleur said, “Ethan, don’t say anything, but be careful around Donnie and Doreen.”
“Uh-huh”
“What do you mean uh-huh?”
“That’s the sound of me not saying anything.”
Fleur gave an exasperated sigh. “They’re heroin addicts, Ethan.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“Neither did I but that’s why I keep my distance.”
Doreen wrinkled her nose with curiosity, so I said, “I hope your mother’s okay. Tell her I send my wishes for a speedy recovery.”
“Good save. Tell Brennan to meet me out front. Have fun, but don’t do drugs.”
“Right on.”
Back at Doreen’s, I met Jaunty, a beautiful transplant from West Virginia. He wore grey gauze over a black pantsuit. His makeup was perfect.
“Ethan? Donnie told me all about you. You’re even better than I imagined.”
I grinned. “What did he say?”
“Just that you’re super smart and you dress well.”
Donnie arrived and interrupted our talk.
“Bartleby gave me six tabs. That’s me, Bill, Doreen, Jaunty, Gloria and Ethan. Perfect.”
There was a great deal of ceremony surrounding the taking of an ecstasy pill with friends. Gloria explained.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a giant like me or tiny like Doreen, the stuff usually hits you all at the exact same time. So, we time it. When it comes, it’s called ‘whoaah.’”
“What is it like?”
Jaunty offered, “It’s like whoa. Only more.”
Donnie shook his head and laughed. “You really can’t talk about whoa until after it happens.”
“Will I see things that aren’t there?”
Everyone laughed. Bill said, “You’ll experience emotions that aren’t there, but your vision is pretty much the same. A little prismatic.”
Several dishes needed washing before all of us could have a glass of water to ensure the whoa happened at the exact moment.
Gloria checked the clock. “It’s 11:30 pm now. We should all whoa before midnight. Ready? One, two, three.”
We all downed the red pill at the same time.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Nothing, let’s just watch Christiane F. and wait.”
The movie is about a girl in Germany who gets hooked on heroin. It starts off with some parties, and just progresses. But at 11:48, Gloria said, “Whoa.”
Donnie looked at her quizzically. “You’re first? But you’re taller than all of us-- whoa.”
Then I felt it. It’s not impossible to describe, but it’s difficult. The room was dark, but it glowed shiny and sparkly. The movie was suddenly very, very interesting. Everyone in the room seemed like they were part of a great big family to which I had never belonged until that moment.
Donnie got a peacock feather and ran it down the front of my face. “Isn’t that just perfect?”
“I love it.”
On the TV, Christiane got a tattoo on her hand. When she went home, her mother glanced at it and said, “That’s not going to come off, you know.”
Donnie laughed. “Isn’t that the point?”
After about thirty minutes of X-ing, we became restless. Jaunty paused the movie and declared that we’re going for a walk.
“I don’t want to put my shoes back on,” Donnie complained.
“Me neither.”
Jaunty shrugged, “Then we’ll go barefoot.”
Outside, it was steamy because of a brief warm thunder shower. The sidewalks felt good against our feet. As a group, we were all pretty striking. I was wearing a gaucho hat and striped hippy jeans, with a suede fringe vest. Donnie’s hair was high. Jaunty grew even more beautiful in the lamplight. We circled Tompkins Square park and ran into Israel, a friend of Donnie’s from Danceteria.
“Hey guys.” He smiled. “What are you doing?”
In unison, we said, “Ecstasy!”
Israel laughed. “Oh, I’ll bet you just LOVE me don’t you.”
“Yes!” we shrieked.
“Have fun, kids.” He walked off towards Avenue B.
Doreen and Donnie laughed about something. “What’s funny?”
Donnie shook his head. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“Do I have a booger?”
This sent everyone into hysterics, even me.
“No, no Ethan, Doreen was talking about puking.”
Doreen smiled shyly. “It’s just that when you puke, it’s awful, right? Just the worst thing ever. But when you’re high on dope, puking is a breeze. You just open your mouth and it comes out.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Donnie added. “And last week Doreen was talking to a tourist who was looking for the Staten Island Ferry, and she said, ‘Excuse me’ then she just turned her head to the side and puked, and went back to giving directions like nothing had happened!”
The image was funny, if not a little sinister.
Jaunty had a puke story. “The other day, I was puking on Avenue A and I caught this man behind me, eating it!”
Everyone howled with disgust.
Donnie said, “Let’s talk about something pleasant.”
I said, “Diarrhea.”
Gloria doubled over laughing, even though it probably wasn’t that funny. But the Ecstasy made everyone giddy.
Saturday night in the East Village doesn’t end until after the bars close. It was midnight; we had just begun our night.
We walked down 2nd Avenue to Nightbirds, where I first met Donnie’s Scorpion ring (and then Donnie himself) over warm chili salad. We realized we wouldn’t be able to go in without shoes. An all-night Chinese store sold flip flops for a dollar. I bought everyone shoes. When we were in Nightbirds, we realized we weren’t hungry, but we all wanted iced coffee. It was the best iced coffee ever known in all of creation.
We left Nightbirds and headed for Avenue C. There was a nondescript door. Donnie knocked and said, “Club Courtesy.” Like a magic password, the door opened, and we were all let in. The floor was a sandbox, which was perfect for our slippers. We saw Mike Monroe from Hanoi Rocks talking to the Specimen in a makeshift booth made of sand and wood.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Save the Robots,” was Donnie’s enigmatic response. Bartenders served hard liquor out of pickle jars. Donnie explained that this was where everyone went when the bars closed. They kept serving drinks until noon.
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“This is New York!”
Downstairs the music was the best music I ever heard, even though it was Run DMC and they had annoyed me when I had to listen to them in the dorms at school. But on this dance floor, it was different. I fell in love. Then LL Cool J rocked the bells. Then Dhar Braxton jumped back. It was the best goddamned dance floor on the entire planet Earth. I smelled rosemary. Someone might have been wearing an essential oil, or it might have been a hallucination. All I know is that I was suddenly finger painting in my backyard in Glen Ellen and I was at peace.
Donnie found me.
“Listen, me and Doreen and Bill are going back to the apartment. Gloria can babysit.”
“I’m fine, really.” And I was. Then after a while, being all alone at an illegal after-hours club high on MDMA seemed like a tiresome idea. I knew that when I exited, I would be on Avenue C, where people got shot. Fleur was probably worried sick about me, and I had left Brennan all alone.
Crash!
I caught a taxi to Fleur’s apartment building on 9th. Someone was coming out, so I caught the door and went in. I walked up two flights to her little apartment. Before I could knock, Fleur opened the door. I startled her.
“I was worried.”
“Sorry.”
She saw the sand in my pant cuffs.
“Save the Robots?”
I grinned sheepishly.
“Come in.”
✽✽✽
Senior year was when boarding students all got to move into the coed “Senior House.” As a day student, I lived in an attic apartment with my mother at Newton Corner. It was a dull neighborhood with no public transportation and I constantly had to beg my mother to let me use the car. I carpooled to school, catching the train in Medford near Tufts. I missed living on campus, but I felt better, away from all the boys I would contaminate with my love.
Mom became increasingly involved with the Tibetan Buddhists down the street, until finally she snapped and decided she was going to live on a commune in Vermont after I graduated. She got her dates mixed up, and she ended up moving out of our apartment a week before my graduation.
So, this story began on Graduation Day. I bleached my hair and teased it. I donned a lady’s top hat and a pair of silver sparkly pants from Harvard Square. There was no one to take my picture or congratulate me. I pretended I didn’t care, but I was sad and angry inside. Everyone else had parents, siblings and extended family there to cheer them on. I got hand-me-down congratulations from parents of friends. In my cubby in Senior room, I had a giant green army duffel filled with everything I owned. I had planned to take the train, but my former roommate Wally and his mom were driving to Philadelphia right after graduation, and they offered to drive me to New York on their way to Philly. So that was the plan.
On the drive down, Wally confessed that he and his mother were going to drop acid to celebrate his graduation. “You don’t really do drugs, do you Ethan?”
“I’ve experimented.”
“Weed?”
“Yes, Melissa Ayres got me stoned. That was awful.”
Wally’s mom wanted to know, “How was it awful?”
“I heard a lot of voices that weren’t there and felt like the sky was falling on my chest.”
“Paranoia. Some people get that. What drugs have you experimented with?”
“I snorted coke, but that was boring. I injected it, and that was the best thing ever for about ten minutes. And I took ecstasy and walked around the East Village barefoot.”
Wally gasped. His mother’s mouth tightened into a straight, hard line.
“You realize injecting drugs isn’t experimenting, right?”
I laughed. “It was for me.” Nobody joined in my laughter.
Wally and I always got along because we both had very unusual mothers. His was a psychic, just like my mom. She pulled a prophecy on me. “You are going to have a lot of trouble now. You set the wheels in motion. I see you making it through, but it’s gonna leave scars.”
I shrugged as if to say, “whatever, hippy chick.” Maybe she was right. I was becoming a ne’er-do-well. Andre and Gladys both knew I was a worthless piece of shit. But I got into all those good schools! I must have been good for something.
And that is how, on the very same day as my graduation, I ended up with a duffel bag ringing Gia’s doorbell on Bleecker Street at Seventh Avenue South.
PART TWO
HOT TOWN SUMMER IN THE CITY
In the Summer of 1986, Manhattan was a sweltering, stinky paradise. I couldn’t wait to be a part of it all. I had no idea that in a couple of months, the paradise would become hell. In my wildest dreams, I never imagined I would leave and connect with my estranged family. How did I get from New York to Oakland? It started at Gia’s.
Across the street, next to the fancy adult store trying to mimic the Pink Pussycat, was a psychic reader. She sat outside with her husband drinking tea. Their English bulldog put his head between his paws and cowered in the shade. The heat was intense.
Gia threw me the keys. They bounced off the awning of John’s Brick Oven Pizza No Slices. I thought it was a good sign that I caught them. Schlepping my stuff up one flight caused my lower back to hurt. I remembered hearing that lower back issues were money problems. I felt an urgent need to ascribe mystical meaning to everything. There were signs everywhere. I was just so excited to finally be living in the city of my dreams.
Gia’s apartment had no air conditioning, but she had a couple of fans blowing. Her makeup was rock solid. Sweat went around it, not through it.
We both lay flat on our backs on her bed and let the air run over us while we talked.
“When is your flight to London?”
“I’m still waiting to find out.”
Somewhere deep inside I was upset by that answer, but I wanted to act cool and unbothered by everything so I would stay her friend.
“How does that happen?”
“I’m going to be a courier. I get a free flight if I take a package with me.”
“That sounds like drugs.”
“We never know what it is. The briefcase is locked, and only the person in London has the key.”
“I think it’s weird stuff like stock certificates and jewelry,” Gia said.
“Huh. Can you go anywhere with that company?”
“Yeah, but you put your name on a list and they call you. Some places, like Sweden, take a million years. Others, like San Francisco, are a matter of hours. And you have to go when they call you, or your name gets put on the flake list. They’ll never call you again.”
I was fascinated. “How did you find out about this company?”
“They have an ad in the Voice.”
“Have you been to Sweden?”
“No.”
We rested quietly, letting the moving air cool us down.
I stared at the sleeves of tattoos that covered Gia’s arms. “Who’s that?”
“Oh my god! It’s Nikki Sixx.” She gave that little signature gasp.
“Who’s that?”
Gia punched me. “From Motley Crue!”
“You’re into them?”
“Listen.” She climbed off the bed and put a record on the phonograph. It’s one of those 1960’s all-in-one phonographs with built in speakers.
Cuz I’m hot and wild and runnin’ free
Little bit better than I used to be
Cuz I’m a live, live wire yeah!
I had to admit the music was pretty good.
A few songs later, I was tired of them.
“What else do you have, Gia?”
“Do you know Hanoi Rocks?”
“That glam band from Finland?”
“Oh my god.” Again, she gasped. “They’re like only the best band ever.”
“Donnie and I saw Mike Monroe at Save the Robots.”
“He didn’t tell me that! Why didn’t he tell me?” She punched me hard.
“Ow!”
“That didn’t hurt, baby.” She punched me again.
I leaped out of bed. “I’m not into pain. I have enough already.”
Gia smiled coyly. “I could make you like pain. So much pain you’d be begging for more.”
I was in a panic until she laughed.
“You should see your face. You were so scared.”
I said, “I don’t really go for pain. It’s not sexy or fun for me.”
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