“Yep. And Aqua. But instead of relaxing, you continue this self-inflicted pursuit of terror, until you finally manage to douse it with vodka and pass out. And then you’re soft again.”
“So far you’ve illustrated why we both need therapy more than why we’re in love.”
“I love you because you push yourself over the same cliff day after day after day and I can’t believe nobody sees it but me. I love you because I’ve never seen anything more fascinating, and I need it to be mine. You’re a shiny object.” Jack pauses. “Why do you love me?”
“Have I said I do?” I ask.
“You did a second ago.”
“Shit.” I pause. I don’t know why. I should know why. But I have no idea.
“Because you touch me when I’m sleeping,” I say finally. “Because you know me soft.”
The party is a bigger success than either of us imagined. Jack and I are sitting in the corner wondering if our uppity neighbors will be pissed by how large the party has grown. “Mr. Beefeater,” one of Jack’s regular clients, is fighting his way through the crowd to bring me a fresh vodka on a small silver tray. This qualifies as minor miracle considering the man is at least eighty years old and not terribly steady on his feet. Jack gave him his nickname based on his outfit—an authentic English Yeoman of the Guard uniform, exactly like the guy on the gin bottle.
He’s been hiring Jack for several years, and his typical session begins days before his arrival when Jack gets a script in the mail outlining a scenario involving some transgression committed by a novice yeoman (Mr. Beefeater), and his subsequent punishment by the Clerk of the Cheque (Jack). By the time the old man shows up at our apartment a couple of days later with his dry-cleaning bag and hatbox, Jack has all his lines memorized. The scene can take hours to play out, with much improvised pleading and shouting. It usually involves Jack commanding the errant guard to disrobe, slowly, piece by piece.
“Off with your morion!” Jack yells during these scenes—at full volume, and with a fake English accent. “You don’t deserve the honor of that tasset! Hand over your bandolier, yeoman!”
It’s a slow motion car wreck of a peepshow, a ritualistic disrobing with increasing square inches of eighty-year-old-man flesh appearing from behind belts and medals and corsets. A drag show slowly rewinding. Jack, as the officer, remains naked throughout except for a leather harness and black boots. From what little I remember from a rushed tour of the Tower of London in high school, I doubt Jack’s attire is historically accurate. But for three hundred dollars an hour, there’s no limit to the revisionism Jack indulges him in. Other than the limit on the old guy’s credit card.
Given Mr. Beefeater’s penchant to please, Jack invited him to come to the party tonight to be my personal servant. In full uniform and on the clock, of course. Even after living such a short time with Jack, I already consider it normal that someone is paying out hundreds of dollars an hour to serve me drinks.
Jack gets up to reward Mr. Beefeater by taking him aside and yelling at him in front of a large group of partygoers for serving my drink without a lime. The old man beams at his unanticipated punishment. Jack’s generous that way.
Laura sits down in Jack’s place.
“I was just in your bathroom peeing while two guys were doing lines off your sink,” she says.
“Did you get lucky?” I ask.
“With the coke or the guys?”
“Knowing how you treat guys,” I say, “I have to root for the coke.”
“They were wondering why Jack is going out with you.”
“Funny, we were having that same discussion earlier,” I say. “I’m sure you stood up for me and informed them I’m plenty good enough for almost any whore.”
“I said, ‘Josh is the most worthy recipient of a complimentary lay of any drunk I know.’”
“Thank you, Laura,” I say, “you’re a true gentleman.”
“Actually, I was talking to Jack earlier,” she continues, “and, as much as I’m loath to admit it, I kinda like him.”
“Well, he doesn’t do chicks. Unless they’re half of a couple.”
“Seriously. He’s not that bad.”
“You could’ve taken my word for it,” I say.
“If I could’ve understood your slurring, I might have.”
The party is visually fascinating. Every drag queen I know has shown up, in all stages of costume. Any time a song with vocals comes on at least one of them hops up on a piece of furniture and does an improptu show for the crowd. As it gets later and later, I imagine that the few remaining psychologists are fighting the urge to whip out notepads and record their observations. It’s like a candy factory for them. In every corner there’s a different specimen. The transsexual with MS in her wheelchair in the dining room, the escort showing a group of onlookers his multiply-pierced cock in the guest bath. And in the kitchen, a small ragged gathering has circled around cooking up a batch of crack over the sink. I’ve never done crack, but have learned it’s a favorite of the male escort industry, along with crystal meth. Unlike pot or heroin, both these drugs actually increase sexual drive, making them the drugs of choice served to the escorts paid to mingle around the better class of sex parties.
Of course, I’m getting staggeringly drunk. By the time the crowd starts to thin out, I can no longer focus long enough to realize whom I’m saying goodbye to. I make my way into the bedroom and fall on the bed. Two figures in the corner notice me struggling to remove my vinyl pants, and they team up to help the birthday boy, getting me down to my underwear and graciously throwing the sheet over me.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been passed out before I wake up to a warm sweaty body on top of me. It’s Jack.
“Hey you,” he says, smiling down at me.
“Hey sexy,” I say.
“Time for your birthday spanking.”
The door to the bedroom is open and I notice a few partygoers huddled in different corners of the living room. Most of the lights have been turned off, but I can see one group that’s obviously in the middle of having sex. Turning my head, I see through the half-open bathroom door three people huddled over the bathroom counter lighting up their freshly cooked crack.
Jack’s body starts grinding on top of me through the sheet.
“Maybe it’s time I gave you your present,” Jack says. Even though he’s moving his hands softly over my body, I can see that every one of his muscles is perfectly stiff. And he’s sweating. Hard.
He leans his face down to kiss me, and I notice his thick lips are swollen and chapped. I kiss him back. I move to kiss him again, but he suddenly gets off me and stands at the foot of the bed and rips the sheet off me.
“Come suck my cock,” he says.
I’m so tired and drunk, I just want the sheet back so I can pass out again.
“I’m too tired,” I slur, “just come to bed with me.” A part of me can’t believe I’m turning him down. I’ve been waiting for this for nearly two months.
“Come on. You’re so beautiful. Come touch me.” He grabs his dick and starts stroking it. It goes from semi-stiff to rock hard almost instantly. Even though I haven’t been able to do anything with it to date, I’ve spent plenty of time admiring it when he walks around the apartment naked. Jack has the most disproportionately large cock I’ve ever seen. I’ve actually stood by the bed in the morning while he’s still sleeping and simply stared at it. When he’s lying on his back, it drapes completely over his thigh and halfway down the side of his hip. If there were a beauty contest for cocks, his would definitely carry the Swimsuit Category, and I’m hoping the Talent Portion as well.
And it’s even more impressive hard.
“Come here, I want you,” he says, smiling a half-smile at me, tilting his head back and laughing. It’s too much for me. I crawl to the end of the bed and pull him on top of me.
I kind of expect the kind of soft-focus movie montage where we roll around making out, while the camera intercuts with close-up shots
of indeterminate mingling fleshy parts. After this long a wait, I expect soft-porn movie magic moments.
But, instead, Jack’s body is incredible stiff and focused. He gropes at my skin, biting me here and there, pushing and pulling my arms and legs into uncomfortable positions. He’s radiating an inhuman amount of heat, and his sweat seems oily, not wet. His skin smells acrid. It tastes like he’s rolled around in crushed aspirins.
We have sex for what seems like hours. Jack is so driven, I sometimes grab his head with my hands to try to force him to look at my face. When he does, his eyes don’t even seem to register my presence. All the physical exertion just exacerbates my drunkenness, and I pass out and come to several times while we’re fucking around. Eventually I black out completely.
When I wake up having to pee, sometime just as the sun is coming up, I’m again alone in bed. I see through the bedroom door the orgy that started hours ago in the living room is still going strong. Though some seem to have passed out at the fringes, a good half-dozen or so are still fucking like thoroughbreds on my folded-out futon. I spot Jack in the center of the group.
Mr. Beefeater has chosen to sleep on the Eames chair in the corner of the bedroom. Jack obviously hasn’t let the poor man off duty. Blocks away, in a town house in Midtown where the escort agency has an office, the MasterCard machine is ticking away hundreds of dollars an hour onto the old man’s card number. He hears the toilet flush, and when I come out of the bathroom, he’s standing by my bed.
“Shall I get you some orange juice, master?” Mr. Beefeater asks me.
I tell him no thanks and crawl back under the covers. I try to mentally will Jack to come climb into bed with me so I can be soft and warm and relaxed. But he doesn’t come.
8
It’s two nights after my party and somehow I’ve recovered just barely enough to make a guest appearance at a club called Barracuda. The main host of the evening is a drag queen named CoCo Poof—a huge muscular African American who’s famous mainly for her insults and distemper. Bar owners consider themselves lucky if an evening hosted by CoCo ends with neither her nor the audience exiting prematurely and in handcuffs.
Her show tonight is named “Snatch Game,” a parody of the old 1970s gameshow Match Game. I’m the “celebrity” drag queen.
“Second-prize winner wins a trip backstage alone with Aqua for ten minutes. Our first-prize winner wins a trip backstage alone with Aqua for ten minutes, and a month’s supply of antibiotics,” CoCo announces to the bar crowd.
I use my microphone to scratch at my crotch and the audience laughs. As a rule of thumb, anytime a drag queen needs a laugh, she merely needs to grab her crotch. People are fascinated with what a drag queen does with her penis. In reality, it’s not that hard to make the thing disappear. True, some queens actually push their testicles up into the abdomen, but most, like me, merely take a hot shower and pull the whole loosened package behind them and pull on a pair of tight underwear. An even larger majority do nothing at all and simply wear an unrevealing outfit. I consider the latter group lazy and sloppy.
CoCo selects two guys from the front row and pulls them onstage. One is excited to get his time in the spotlight. The other looks like the kind of guy who never would normally do this sort of thing, but given the parade of empty glasses on his table, he’s probably amenable to most anything at this point. Just my type.
“Aqua is so slutty…” CoCo says, reading off an index card.
“…How slutty is she?!” the crowd roars back on cue.
“Aqua is so slutty,” CoCo continues, “the federal government has declared her bedroom a ______.”
The sound guy starts up the theme song while the contestants begin thinking up their answers. I scribble my answer on a card. The object is to see if either contestant matches my answer. If they do, they earn a point.
“Aqua is so slutty, the federal government has declared her bedroom a ______,” CoCo repeats when the time is up. “Contestant One, I need your answer.”
“Federal Disaster Area,” the dramatic guy answers.
“Contestant Two? Your Answer?”
“Toxic Waste Dump.”
“And Aqua, your answer?”
I flip my card over.
“Free Trade Zone.”
CoCo continues her questioning. “Aqua is so drunk…” “Aqua is so poor…” “Aqua’s boyfriend is so horny…”
I haven’t seen Jack since yesterday morning after the party. When I woke up the second time, he was gone, along with the rest of the partygoers. When I opened my eyes, I was staring directly at Luis, our cleaning woman’s son, who was standing next to our bed. Luis is severely autistic, and while his mother cleans, he hides in closets or behind doors and stares at us. We pretend not to see him. He gets nervous and finds another hiding place if he knows we’ve spotted him.
There was a note from Jack on the dining room table. Jack always covers the borders of his notes with little cryptic drawings, usually of cactuses and desert scenes. He was raised in Southern California. This note had the words “Happy Birth day” made out of saguaro cactuses across the top, and went on to say that he had a call that would last for at least a day, and that he couldn’t wait to come home and crawl into bed with me. He didn’t come home that night or all of today. I left some colored pencils out on the table for Luis to color in the cactuses Jack had outlined.
“…And now it’s time for our final bonus question!” CoCo shouts over the increasingly uninterested crowd. “The contestant with the correct answer to this question will take home our grand prize!” Even though the same crowd has been coming to CoCo’s show for months, no one’s ever pointed out to her that in addition to not actually having any real grand prize, she’s also never kept any sort of score.
“Aquadisiac has a vaginal yeast infection so itchy…” (by now only three or four audience members are paying enough attention to slur out “how itschy ish it?” ) “that she insists her boyfriend put ______ on his cock instead of a condom.”
The DJ is nearly as bored by now as the audience is, so he plays the theme song in fast forward while the contestants and I furiously scribble out our answers.
“Contestant Number One, I need your answer! Her twat is so itchy she makes her boyfriend put ______ on his cock instead of a condom.”
“A Brillo pad,” shouts Contestant One, flipping his card.
“Sandpaper,” mutters the shy one.
“And Aqua? Your anwer?”
“Genital warts,” I answer, having completely lost all interest in anything other than a drink.
“And with five correct answers—and more important, a much shaplier ass—our first prize winner is…you…whatever your name is!” CoCo yells excitedly. My job now is to take the two contestants behind the curtain while CoCo performs a song. I’m supposed to get them to strip down to their underwear backstage and smear them with lipstick.
The dramatic guy begins stripping as soon as I suggest it, but the shy guy needs a little help.
“Come on,” I say, “your buddy’s doing it.” My opening tactic is always peer pressure.
“I’ll just take my shirt off,” the shy guy says.
“If you go out there with your pants still on, CoCo is going to publicly humiliate you.”
The shy guy stares at me pleadingly, clearly regretting that last gimlet. On to Plan B.
“Just pull them down to your knees—you can pull them up once you get out there.” It’s my best offer. If he declines, I’ll have to start unbuttoning them myself.
He takes his shirt off and pulls his pants down to his ankles.
“That’s not so bad,” I say. I cup my hand over his crotch. “In fact, it’s pretty impressive. I bet double your drink tickets you’ll get laid tonight.”
It was just the push he needed, and the pants come all the way off. I smear lipstick over both of their chests and the front of their underwear. When I’m done, I take the lipstick and write “Aqua was here” on the shy guy’s back, and push
them both onstage just as CoCo finishes her song.
I stumble out after them, and once I reach center stage I reach behind me and pull an opened “used” condom out of the back of my underwear, acting astonished as to how it ever could have gotten there. I hand it to the shy guy, as if returning it.
“Throw it into the audience,” I whisper into his ear. He does and the audience screams and claps. Show’s over. Time for a drink.
On my way to the bar I look over everyone’s head as if I’m searching for someone. I’ve found this to be the best way to avoid people stopping me and trying to start a conversation. Not that I mind chatting with the patrons—actually that’s what they pay me for—but just not when I’m on my way to the bar. Jesus Christ himself could descend directly in front of me and I would pretend to wave to someone behind him and keep beelining toward the booze.
Tucked in the corner of the bar with my sixth vodka, I put on a face like a pit bull guarding his dog bowl so that no one approaches. I scientifically calculate that I have at least four more drinks to get down before I get approximately where I want to be. No time for chitchat.
I could head home now. The bar owner is pretty cool here. Most make you stay till closing so that the bar stays full after the show, but this guy doesn’t seem to care. He leaves the pay envelope behind the bar and usually heads home by one or two a.m.
Part of me wants to leave and go home to see Jack, and another part of me is petrified that he’s not going to be home yet. Up until lately, I haven’t minded his absences. If he’s gone more than a few hours he usually calls from wherever and lets me know what’s going on. Usually the long-term gigs are twoor three-day “parties” in some rich guy’s hotel room. Jack calls from a phone in the lobby or outside and gives me the lowdown. How many escorts are there. How much money they’re making. What kind of pervert the guy is. What sorts of drugs they’re doing.
Jack always tells me what “party favors” he’s done. Coke. Crack. Meth. The client insists that the escorts party with him. It’s his scene. And the escorts generally make a cutoff of the party favors they supply. Jack’s dealer lives on the Lower East Side, and I’ve seen him make it to our Upper East Side apartment in less than ten minutes. Most of the time the more professional escorts simply will pretend to use, or else find a way to take a tiny hit so they don’t get too fucked up. The longer they can keep the party going, the more money they make. And if they get too high, it’s harder to keep stealing the client’s money. When a party’s over, he and the other escorts usually head back to one of their respective apartments to sober up before heading home.
I Am Not Myself These Days Page 7