A central L-shaped hallway branched off into different rooms, divided by wonky sheets of drywall covered in colorful graffiti tags and phone numbers of people who suck cock.
“This is what.” I said.
“The Gavin Brown Gallery. My place. It’s an art installation, and I’m validating it by living here.”
“I get it,” I said, though I didn’t get it at all.
It’s weird, what keeps your legs from running when your brain says go. I felt guilty just being there, like I was cheating on Derek. It made no sense, but feelings can be so blind to logic.
Adam must have noticed my hesitation. He planted his mouth over mine for a solid minute. His spit was more viscous than mine, and it felt warm and silky on my tongue. His eyes, lined with black kohl, were closed, and I wondered what pictures he was playing on the inside of his head to have melted his sullenness into this living liquid in my mouth. I could taste traces of sadness in him, but more than that. Lightlessness.
A different kind of logic took hold of me. Why should I feel guilty about having sex, for the first time I can remember, with someone I’m attracted to?
“Where’s the bedroom,” I said.
“Pick one.”
I pushed him backwards into the nearest corner and peeled his shirt over his head. His chest was white and fragile, almost bird-like, with two nipple piercings that looked slightly raw and infected. I left my clothes on because I wasn’t in the mood to be vulnerable—not just yet.
I shucked his pants for him and bent him over. Adam’s crack was filled with this soft, mousy brown fur that curled into a cowlick near his tailbone when I made it wet with a lascivious lick.
“I think it’s really sexy that you wear sneakers with a suit,” I said, ruining the wordless state of bliss that we had achieved.
I buried my face in his bum and he squirmed. I licked circles around his hole and then pushed my tongue into him. He tasted like apples and sweat, almost bittersweet. When he moaned, I could feel the vibrations buzz right through my mouth. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more intimate with anybody, save Derek. There was something exotic about eating out a queer goth boy’s butt. Something dark.
God freeze this minute forever. I was getting weepy. Who said you had to take your clothes off to be vulnerable?
Adam turned his head and looked at me over his shoulder.
“I want you to fuck me until I lose my voice screaming your name.”
I told him what it was, and exactly how to pronounce it.
I left much later, when the sun began to spill into this corner of the city, when Adam was sleeping and voiceless, and when missing Derek hurt too much.
This is how I experience Richard in traces:
When I pass a car window and see my reflection, when I feel beautiful despite a lip ring infection or a rash-du-jour or a nose-diving sense of self-worth, when I’m tempted to spread my ass cheeks and then realize I have other things to offer, when I’m tying my shoes, when I find myself retelling a part of my journey, when I feel vulnerable.
It would be easier to find shit and ephemera with a MetroCard bent to work forever. Nevertheless, the city gives up its dead:
Revolvers, shell casings, kitchen knives, pacifiers, photo albums with pages torn out, fingerless gloves that smell like perfume, rolledup panties that smell like pussy, half-full bottles of Absolut vodka, bones, baby dolls with holes cut into their crotches.
Could these lists be what Derek means by “punding”?
When I walked into the loft, Derek was bent over the table arranging a bunch of crocuses and hydrangea. He was wearing a dress-shirt buttoned up to the top and his blond bangs were combed gorgeously. There were two art deco ceramic plates on the table, each of them rimmed with steaming white asparagus shoots under melting butter, a pork chop, and a frumpy mound of mashed potatoes.
I was missing something.
“Good morning and happy birthday,” he said. “I figured I’d just reheat your birthday dinner ... you don’t mind having asparagus for breakfast, do you?”
I just stood there.
“What was his name?”
“Adam,” I said morosely, aware of his tactics.
“Enjoy fucking him?”
“Please, just not today. Let’s not fight.”
“Of course. The sex tired you out.”
“Listen, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s a free country.”
We sat down and started on my birthday breakfast. Derek uncorked a bottle of 1988 Château Margaux red that I know he’d been saving for a special occasion. He poured himself a glass and took a swig, looking out the window, his smarmy smile slowly dissolving. My glass was still empty.
“I’m sorry for missing dinner,” I said.
“If you don’t cut down on the fucking meth, you’ll have to move out, unless I have the energy to check you in—you know where. I can’t live with an addict.”
“Just give me some time,” I said. “I can do it.”
Thank you for sending your story, but Ploughshares is closed to submissions until further notice.
Please be assured that it has nothing to do with the quality of your writing.
The Editors
The thought has crossed my mind, by the way, to submit these rejection letters. Some of them are real pieces of work.
Jackie 60 dress code, Y2K Madness, December 28, 1999:
End-of-the-world mood rings, binary code safety vests, glow-inthe-dark underwear, steel-toe John Fluevog shitkickers, Tron helmets with spelunker headlamps, Armageddon body armor, millennial nudism, clit rings and other Raelian homing devices, “R.I.P. Microsoft” pin-back buttons, Strange Days simulated reality brain SQUIDs, cyberpunk gear, gold bullion Hermes belt buckles.
Too bad I wasn’t there.
There were only two days left in 1999.
It was coming down to last chances.
My publishing strategy—mail and wait, wait, wait—wasn’t aggressive enough to catch anyone’s attention. I’ve learned that you have to fight for what you want. Nobody’s going to give it to you otherwise. I had to meet a powerful person, like I had done to become Boy New York, and convince them I was “the one.”
I had to get a literary agent.
The brass revolving doors swept me into the highfalutin lobby of the Fifth Avenue tower. You know, an indoor waterfall and a general overdose on feng shui. I adjusted my skinny tie and sport jacket, feeling more like Tom Hadley in a Spandau Ballet video than a writer.
It hadn’t been easy to get an appointment with a Gray and Brennan literary agent because the secretaries there hang up as soon as you mention the plague word “unpublished.” I had to call back a few times with a less poisoned pitch.
I got off the elevator on the fourteenth floor. That number, for some reason, gave me a wave of body anxiety.
The on-duty secretary was a mincing twink dressed in Old Navy.
“Name.”
“Jaeven Marshall. I’m here to see Mr Brennan.”
“You and ten thousand other people.”
“Yeah, well, I have an appointment. Do your job and look it up.”
He smiled a “fuck you” at me, and made the call.
Mr Brennan walked in.
Holy Angels of nipple torture.
His shock cancelled mine out and we shook hands uncomfortably. I glanced at my hand after he let go, expecting to find a wad of cash, a reflex I can’t seem to lose.
Dennis the sock freak was looking much different in his Armani suit.
My worlds collide all the fucking time.
“Come to my office.”
I followed him and he closed the door carefully and meticulously, turning the brass handle so it wouldn’t make noise.
“What the hell are you doing here? We can’t do this at work. How did you—”
“I’m here to show you my writing.”
“Funny, ha-ha. Now get serious. This is unethical of you as a businessperson,” he said.
I handed him my notebook. I could’ve given him the copies that I’d printed for submission, but I wanted him to see the material in its natural habitat. The writing was pretty neat, so I didn’t think it was a major deal that it was in pencil and sometimes ran upside-down and even off the page. He held my coffee-stained masterpiece up to the light and squinted a face full of crow’s feet at it. My blood work. A year of personal excavation.
“This is a fucking diary. Are you kidding me?”
He handed it back and looked at me matter-of-factly.
“I can’t do anything with this.”
He was hoping I would go away, the asshole. Little did he know that he was my gift horse, and that I was going to ride his aging ass to the glue factory.
“You know,” I said, taking liberties to pick up and spit-shine a 1986 World Series baseball signed by the Mets, “we find ourselves in a bit of a situation here.”
I motioned to the door with my head.
“Gray and Brennan.”
Balls in hand. I knew where he worked.
“What do you want?” Dennis said.
“I want to get published.”
“I can’t ... we can’t do that. It’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?”
He gave me a vicious smile.
“Because writers are writers and whores are whores.”
He opened a desk drawer and flipped me a dog bone of twenties rolled together with rubber bands (I didn’t have to give him a sock this time), along with a fat Ziploc baggie of meth. The crystals refracted the light right through my skull. I could already feel the high coming on, choking down the guilt and images of a furious Derek.
“That’s hard to get,” I told him.
“Best of luck placing your work,” he said. “We don’t know each other.”
“How did it go today?”
I wanted to have good news for him.
“It was whatever.”
Wink and Nod, now permanently retired to a life of daffodils and hydroponic lettuce, bumped affectionately into my shins.
Derek walked me over to the far wall of the loft.
“I’m showing these tomorrow.”
He gestured to a dozen canvases in front of us.
“You’re having your first show?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted it to be a surprise.”
The paintings were truly beautiful, and I’m not just saying that to be supportive. The profusion of color left me breathless. It was overwhelming to see my stories told through his brushstrokes. I saw all of his moods washing into each other, out of each other, changing with the ebb and flow of his half of our relationship.
It made sense, in a circular kind of way, that these paintings were inspired by my stories and failures. Derek had rescued me from the spits and kicks of the street, then he gave me a brand new start, created a safe space for me to incubate in, and watched over me as I grew. I owed him everything. Being a good muse was the least I could do.
“What do you think?” he said.
“You’re beautiful.”
I kissed him. His eyebrows floated in surprise.
“It’s at the Forsythe and White Gallery,” he said. “The show starts at midnight, January 1, so don’t be late. You should come a little early.”
“I will.”
“Are you ... are you okay with me selling these paintings? I mean ...”
I could have felt violated. I could have acted jealous. There were so many petty ways I could have quashed his painting career, but seeing him happy felt too damn good.
“It’s fine. Just make sure you charge more than I do.”
Shit’s way more wonky than I could’ve imagined:
Maine’s Department of Motor Vehicles sent ownership titles for “horseless carriages” to buyers of year 2000 cars and trucks. The vehicle registry system was in a tizzy and misread 2000 as 1900. Less than half of the 800 car owners and 1,400 truck owners who found out they were driving buggies asked the DMV for new titles.
“Jaeven,” Derek said in bed that night.
“I’ve been taking less,” I said. “It feels weird, but I’ve been cutting down.”
That’s what I told him. You can probably figure out the truth.
Sleep? Who can sleep on a night like this? I checked the mailbox one last time.
As if.
It’s the middle of the night and I’m in the bathroom, holding my new Ziploc of meth. There’s a toilet, a sink, and a shower drain, so I’d have no excuse not to dissolve this habit once and for all if I wanted to, unless to spare innocent sewer rats from a wicked tweak high.
There’s something I’d like to bring up, here in the bathroom in the middle of the night. Derek is blaming our relationship troubles exclusively on meth, which is unfair and delusional. There were countless times when we iced each other, pushed buttons, and hid the truth, and that had nothing to do with drugs. Even you know that.
And anyways, you’re supposed to quit for yourself, not for anyone else.
Millennial madness. The last night of the last thousand years.
The rumor was that you couldn’t find a cop for miles because they were all in Times Square preparing for the end of civilization.
The rumor was that if you were in a space shuttle at the moment the ball dropped and the clock struck twelve, all you’d see was our crazy island fading to red and blue—police cruiser light.
The rumor was that the cops were going to ruin this party something bad.
I went to Coyote Ugly to get into the Y2K spirit before going to Derek’s show. Phil was buying drinks and I got a little wonky, dancing to Madness’s “Our House.” I ended up sprawled on a table of Windex shooters, licking myself clean. Chase was there, schmoozing up whoever he could before Y2K shut his career down. Mine had already dried up, along with the batteries in my pager.
Peter Jennings was rapping on ABC’s New Year’s Eve Special on the TV above the bar:
“Humanity has reached a crossroads tonight, the end of a millennium and the start of a new one. John F. Kennedy once said, ‘the only thing to fear is fear itself.’”
Jennings should’ve been quoting The Far Side, not Kennedy. Just because.
“There’s nothing else to do but wait. We have a Y2K specialist here in the studio to tell us what the likelihood is of losing the national power grid ...”
The camera fell off his face and onto the floor. The grip must’ve dropped it to get his drunk on, realizing that in a few hours, he wouldn’t need that crappy job of framing Jennings’ pretty head anymore.
According to the Y2K “specialist,” bank machines would be spitting out hundred-dollar bills at the end of the world.
Head starts were all the rage. People had been lining up at Chase Manhattan ATMs for a good week. There were runs on food, water, batteries, radios, Cheetos, candles, duct tape, hypodermic needles, ammo, firearms, bullets, rifles, 38’s and 45’s, cross-bows, arrows, pepper-spray, vodka, beer, cash, gold, stocks and bonds, generators, oxygen tanks, chemical weapon antidotes, vaccines, three-ply Charmin toilet paper, underwear, DVDs, PlayStation video games, and gasoline.
There’s a fine line between emergency preparedness and hysteria fuelled by clever marketing.
It was around this point that reality hazed out on me. I may have been there in the bar, I may have been outside skimming for priceless trash, and I may have been back home, far away from New York City. The feeling was scary but fun.
I seemed to be dancing with some guy wearing a Nike tracksuit, chunky gold jewelry, and a pair of neon fly glasses that covered half his face.
“You’re cute,” he said to me. “What do you do?”
“I’m a pornstar.”
“Must be a fun job.”
“I get to shake my dick at people. It’s not bad. What are you supposed to be, a deejay or something?”
“Not exactly.”
“It’s okay.
I like deejays.”
Then a drag mama in a bad wig bumped into me and stuck her mouth in my ear.
“Don’t you know who that is?” she said.
“He’s probably one of my fans. What difference does it make which one?”
I took fly guy’s cocktail, downed it, and fondled the chain clunking around his neck. He smirked.
“I’m a writer, too,” I told him. “It’s just that I’m naked sometimes.”
“Then I might have a job for you,” he said, laughing.
I was supposed to say something.
That’s when I recognized him, or at least who I imagined was in front of me.
I was now supposed to say something to David fucking LaChurch. What were the chances? Another drink of indeterminate composition helped keep my mind from shattering too violently. This was the writing opportunity of a lifetime. Was he going to ask me to work on his film?
Peter Jennings had given up on being decorous, and instead, was playing crazy eights with his co-anchors, looking bedroom sexy without a tie. Even he had figured out that it was all coming to an end. The sound cut out (probably another technician gone to the ATM) and was replaced by The Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere.”
“We’re leaving, but you should come with,” David said. “The limo’s taking us to Windows on the World.”
His posse piled into the limo. I was squinched in with his family of beautiful freaks and unlikely superstars. Bonnie Le Hoar, transsexual of the gods, was nearly suffocating me with silicone tits covered only by silver tassels. If you don’t know what she looks like, picture Marilyn Monroe’s face stung by a swarm of bees. Angry ones that have a thing for lips.
Plastic surgery nightmare Kitty Braunstein was purring beside her. She gave me this shell-shocked stare and hissed. If you don’t know what she looks like, picture a mountain lion with chin and cheek implants swollen with collagen and beaten with a baseball bat.
This was one sweet dream.
Möet and Chandon all around, and the limo drove off.
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