Boys Keep Swinging

by Jake Shears

  I met up with Anderson there, and we stayed at a flat of a friend of his, its balcony overlooking a beautiful piazza. We shopped and lounged, wandered the Colosseum, napped and fooled around, ate giant plates of pasta. It was just for two days, but we had a rhythm with each other, and established a friendship that is alive and well to this day. He remains one of the loveliest people I know.

  My last night in Mykonos was heavy. I went out by myself and was picked up by a group of guys: two Germans, one Swiss guy, and two New Yorkers. One of them was a Broadway dancer who seemed to take himself the least seriously. We all went back to a hotel room and fooled around. By the time I shuffled back to my little rented room, I felt gross. The sun was coming up and the stores were opening. I had spent too much of myself.

  The light was just starting to appear in the alleyway outside my room when I heard the first screams. They came from the window right across from my own. It was a man and woman in an argument. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, because it was in Greek. Their voices escalated and I heard a huge slap and the woman shrieking. His big deep voice thundered into my room—it was like he was right there, sounding like a demon. Huge crashes, like he was throwing her into a wall. I ran into the main area of the house where I was staying, and the little old landlady who could speak no English was standing in the kitchen, listening as well. She had been sweet and taken good care of me, but when I walked out she put a finger to her lips and shook her head.

  “But it sounds like she’s being killed.” I was frantic. Somebody had to help this woman.

  The old lady said something in Greek and, with her hand motions, it said to me, “Be very quiet. This is very sad, but we don’t say anything or talk about it.”

  I realized that it was probably a regular occurrence. I ran back to my room and amidst their screams I threw all of my clothes and books and my journal into my backpack and brushed my teeth. I was getting out of there, getting the fuck off this island. Obviously, I had overstayed my welcome. I gave a curt goodbye to the landlady and fled to the docks, where a ferry was just about to leave. I bought a ticket to the island of Andros and sailed.

  The sea stretched before me and I grasped the rails of the ferry. It was going to be a hot day—I could already feel the sun burning on my skin. It was July 24, 2001, 8 a.m., and I hadn’t slept. My large backpack rested at my feet as I watched the foamy wake of the boat as it sliced through the still waters. Mykonos was growing smaller in my sights, shrinking into a speck. I needed it to shrink. Everything had gotten too big in the last twenty-four hours. I felt empty. Something had shifted. I was rudderless.

  The shining white of Mykonos was burned into my retinas. I had allowed myself to get sucked in, a wholly pleasurable experience, but now I was totally alone. I’d heard Andros was a quiet spot. I didn’t need any more stimulation. But nothing would have prepared me for the earsplitting silence I would find when I arrived.

  I had now been away from the States for a month, floating and roaming. I thought I was getting the hang of being on my own. But my heart was a tangle of romance and late nights. I had allowed it to open too wide, had let down my guard with everybody. My carelessness had left me feeling like shit.

  Now it was just this boat on the blue water. I sat on a bench and rubbed my eyes, feeling the stinging tears well up, my throat closing. Andros was a big dirt rock in the distance coming closer and revealing itself as nothing but a dock. I disembarked from the ferry and walked toward the only building I saw, my backpack feeling as heavy as the cloud in my mind. The stumpy building just sat like a gravestone on the empty street. I turned and looked back as the ferry pulled away. There was no one here.

  The lobby was dark and hot. All the windows were open and there were two fans above, their rotations lazy. The long-haired man at the desk gave me a room for forty dollars.

  It was scuffed and simple, with a small window looking out at the sea. I set my backpack on my bed with unease. The only noise was the soft whir of the fan. I had just made yet another miscalculation. I had managed to place myself in a purgatory. I laid my face in my hands and cried.

  That room was like an arid tomb. I missed Anderson and Steve. But perhaps I was just addicted to the feeling of possibility. I flipped through my CD book and pulled out the Tangerine Dream score to Thief, popped it into my Discman, and headed outside to find somebody renting scooters.

  I rode to a beach and wandered down from a huge rocky hillside. Once I made it to the shore, there wasn’t a single person there. I walked, pulling all my clothes off, the sea lapping at my toes. Like most times when I had nothing to do or nowhere to go, I decided to jerk off out in the sun. Around me it was as if the world had emptied out. It was like being in a blinding waiting room to the rest of my life. My sadness and boredom surged into momentary bliss.

  After I came, I turned around and realized I hadn’t been alone. A large white goat was standing on a rock, staring. “How’d I do?” I said. The goat looked unimpressed.

  On my walk back, as I started up the side of the mountain, my footsteps became heavier, my breathing labored. It occurred to me that I hadn’t brought any water as my vision began to swim. I was ravenously thirsty and tried to focus on the climbing, my general sadness taking a backseat to fear. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it back without passing out. There was no shade or escape from the sun. When I finally reached my bike and returned to the hotel, it was on burnt and weaving legs. I stuck my head under a cold faucet and gulped huge mouthfuls of water.

  August 9, 2001

  Last night I was in Berlin. Andy played me “Nutbush City Limits” while I lounged on his bed. Can’t believe I’ve never heard it, holy shit it’s good. I was so tired, but wanted to go out anyway, I didn’t know if I could do it, so this guy Lester gave me a tiny speed bump to swallow that was wrapped in a little bit of paper. We then headed to Ostgut. A massive wild club, must have been an old factory. We danced and talked and finally at 4 a.m. we left. Some friends walked me to the ATM because I had no money on me. But none came out. So I didn’t think I could go to Budapest. Someone gave me five marks for the train, and an ATM in another neighborhood let me take some money out.

  At 6 a.m. I packed my bags and called Mary from a pay phone at the train station, using a calling card number my mom had given me for emergencies.

  “Have you checked the children?” I asked in my gravelly devil voice.

  “Where the hell are you?” she said. “You sound like you’re underwater.”

  “I’m calling from a toilet bowl,” I replied. “It’s the best new club in Berlin.”

  “What time is it there? Please tell me you’ve slept.”

  “With just about everybody. I’m headed to Budapest. Got a twelve-hour train ride or some shit. I’m exhausted.”

  “I literally just read your horoscope in The Stranger. You wanna know what it says?” I heard her rattle a paper. “ ‘Okay, the fun is over and it’s time to get to work.’ Baby needs to come home.”

  “I know,” I replied. “I’m trying not to think about it.”

  “What is your plan exactly?” Her words hung in the air. I glanced around warily at all the purposeful, fresh-faced Germans starting their day. It was a question I’d been avoiding asking myself. I’d been winging it for years, and now the protection that college had provided was over. Reality was starting to encroach from the periphery: I had no fucking clue what my plan was.

  I WAS SLEEPING AT MY pal Greg’s the morning the towers fell. There were four of us piled in the bed after a lovely drunken home-cooked feast the night before. The crash woke us up. We looked at each other bleary-eyed and confused, thinking that there had been a car accident down on the street. My friend Julie must have gotten up to go look out the window, because I had fallen asleep again when she ran into the room screaming about a plane.

  We walked up a couple of flights to the roof, squinting our eyes at the bright blue sky. Still in my underwear, I had a blanket wrapped around me like
a cloak. Greg’s place was on Grand Street in SoHo: We were so close. The buildings loomed above us, one with a jagged mouth on the side, red flames lightly licking its perimeter. A plane had gone in, people were saying. No one really knew what kind it had been. Was it just a little prop plane that had lost control?

  We didn’t see the second plane, because it came from the south side toward us. There was just a huge explosion, a fireball shooting out of the tower. Everyone jumped and screamed, suddenly chittering like animals. Was it a missile, a bomb? Were there other missiles coming? “We should get inside,” we said. Greg didn’t have a TV, but we found a radio. Up and down the stairs I went. Trying to hear, trying to see. All the bits sparkling, falling from the building. What looked like confetti was people. When the buildings crumbled, I told myself they were just on a giant elevator, being lowered into the ground.

  Greg and I ventured out into the street with no destination in mind. The sidewalks were jammed. I kept listening to bits of conversation, trying to piece together what others were saying. Thoughts were scattered, people talked about other things, in shock. We went to Matthew Delgado’s penthouse for a few minutes and had some coffee and then walked to my friend Mark Tusk’s, where we smoked some weed and listened to soul records. We finished off with some tuna sandwiches at Veselka. The transactions were grim-faced but kind, a sick understanding unsaid. Word was that we were going to have to get out of downtown. Everyone under Fourteenth Street was being evacuated.

  I found a working subway to Michael Warner and Sean Belman’s, two friends I had recently made in Brooklyn and was staying with. I’d had an apartment I was about to sublet on Twelfth Street and Avenue A. But now, after the evacuation, I wasn’t going to be able to move in for a while. Who knew when they were going to let people back downtown?

  Michael was on his way back from his teaching job at Rutgers. Sean and I gazed out their window at the sunset, looking at the neutered skyline. We turned to each other and kissed, had sex on the floor, trying to forget what we’d seen.

  We convince ourselves we have some kind of control over our fate. And to a degree, I guess we actually do. But so much of life is a reaction to our surroundings and circumstances, on small and grand scales. Decisions are so often made for us; tragedy can define your direction. Starting a band was all I could think of to do. Maybe it was just that now I had an excuse. Maybe it was a brief window of time when no one was going to grab my arm and stop me and say, “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”

  On September 21, Scott Hoffman and I were at the Slipper Room. The stage we stood on was dark, the curtain closed. I was nervous, and looked over at Scott, who didn’t seem too bothered. The hostess of the night, Ana Matronic, was in front of the crowd, announcing us. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to introduce to you a new band. All the way from Finland . . . Just kidding. But they are a new band, and I wish I’d come up with the name myself: Scissor Sisters!”

  The curtains parted. The room in front of us was full. Faces stared back, expecting something. Scott pressed play on the minidisc player and gave me a nod, and our staccato synth started. I must have been inspired by my psychotic former roommate: I was wearing a kimono. I took the microphone in my hand and began to sing.

  I see you dancing

  Damn, you look good

  I wish I could dance like you

  But I ain’t got no legs

  I see you having sex

  Damn, you look good

  I wish I could have sex too

  but I ain’t got no sexual organs

  People were laughing. My voice was shaking, rattled from my racing heart. But the number was landing.

  I rode the bicycle of the devil

  Riding straight to hell.

  This wasn’t my first time onstage at the Slipper Room. I had performed there the previous spring for a night called Knock Off. One of the hosts was Ana, whom I’d met at a party at this guy Joe Corcoran’s house. He was a mutual friend who made music under the name Hungry Wives. He would throw parties in his loft under the Williamsburg Bridge.

  The first time I saw Ana, she was wearing a green velvet dress and a red wig. We were both very drunk. She told me she threw a performance party called Knock Off that had different themes every week and handed me a flyer. The next one coming up was an aerobics theme. I internally rolled my eyes. Aerobics? I’d already thrown an aerobics party two years before. I could be such a snob.

  But I did have an act I wanted to try out. For Halloween I had dressed up as a back-alley late-term abortion and my friend Lucy was the RU-486 morning-after pill. My costume had been vivid: a bald cap, umbilical cord, and coat hangers bursting through my chest, dripping with blood and gore, shit hanging off my face. It was hideous. I decided to try the outfit again and go as “Jason, the Dancing Back-Alley Late-Term Abortion.” Hey, I never claimed I had any taste.

  When I did the abortion routine at Knock Off, a drag queen in mom jeans named Mangela Lansbury, also performing that night, dragged me out to the stage inside a black garbage bag. I burst out, reborn in a glam New York nightclub, and did a dance routine to “Goddess,” the main theme from Showgirls. Thank goodness the number came toward the end of the proceedings. The other performers probably wouldn’t have appreciated the leftover blood on the stage.

  That third week of September, with the smoke still hanging in the air, no one seemed to know what to do with themselves. I was supposed to be looking for a job, but hiring would be scarce. So I hung around Scott’s apartment like some deadbeat while we started messing around with recording again. He would man the computer while I banged away on a keyboard. It was a lot of stopping and starting, but we were learning some new tricks as we worked. There was novelty in making sounds and hearing them come back out of the monitors. The time Scott and I spent together, laughing and coming up with rudimentary songs, was at least a way for us to get our minds off the chaos just outside our doors.

  At his apartment, about a week after the tragedy, I went to get a glass of water in the kitchen and came back with an idea. “Let’s take this song and go sing it somewhere,” I said. People were sad. They needed to be entertained. We could go do it at that Knock Off party at the Slipper Room. There was one on Wednesday.

  I had recently been walking down Fifth Avenue and had a vision of a stationary bike, with a fan blowing on me, wearing a kimono. The song would be called “Bicycle of the Devil.” Scott and I thought it was stupid and hilarious.

  Within minutes Scott had mocked up a logo of a pair of scissors wearing high heels. And there we were, three days later, singing lyrics maybe even more juvenile than my high school days, in front of a crowd with their mouths agape:

  I see you defecating

  Damn, you look good

  I wish I could take a shit too

  But I ain’t got no anus.

  Someone turned on a strobe light and my kimono went flying, revealing a leather G-string, combat boots, and a harness. The flashing lights reflected off Scott’s round goggles while I finished the number, gyrating and grinding. It was all I really knew how to do at the time. When the number ended, people clapped and hooted. I felt like my heart was going to explode out of my body.

  That was the beginning of Scissor Sisters.

  NEW YORK WAS AN EMOTIONAL wasteland. People were trying to find normalcy, going about their routines, but underneath it was an awful fear. You could see it in every stranger’s eyes, in the reams of MISSING signs still on every lamppost and on the sides of bodegas. It was like an uncanny parallel world we’d been thrust into.

  I finally moved into my East Village apartment on Twelfth Street and started putting together résumés for assistant positions at various magazines. But it was a charade: There were no jobs to be had. For extra money, I was writing articles for the local gay rags. But for the rest of 2001, interviewing Crystal Waters or Amber about their new singles seemed pointless. When I was talking to artists about their work, it was as if they’d run out of things to say. The w
alls of my new apartment were small and imposing, but I was comforted by their swaddle—it was a new kind of privacy. There was no one watching me: I was finally in a place on my own. The sex noises I now heard came not from roommates, but from pigeons hanging out on the window ledge.

  The woman I was subletting from was uptight, but I had a feeling that she wasn’t coming back. If I played my cards right, I could take over the lease, which was rent-controlled, to boot. As cheap as it was, I still had to come up with the dough. Magazine articles were a cushion, but they didn’t pay particularly well.

  A cloud of uncertainty lingered. I still didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. I loved the city, but I longed for more freedom inside of it. Having a boss in an office didn’t feel free to me. I looked at friends of mine, college graduates who had been working for the new barrage of start-ups. Every subway or TV ad you saw was for some kind of dot-com. It seemed like all my friends had been hired. I watched them, actors, writers, and musicians chained to their hours and complaining that they didn’t have time or energy to pursue the things that mattered to them.

  The weeks through September and October were strange in that they became a lot of fun. Much of the city was at a standstill, but clubs and bars were packed at night, smelling of musky hedonism. My friends were getting drunker than usual, finishing the nights with tricks in tow. There was a sense of abandon, a communal shoulder shrug about the future. We’d go to a firefighter’s funeral by ourselves, somewhere specific to cry. And at night our dark humor prevailed. “What buildings, hunny?” we’d say in our best bimbo voices, and cackle. Small talk was sweeter than usual, the kisses more lusty. I was living now almost right above the Cock, so it was easily accessible from my apartment. At any given moment I could walk downstairs and get drunk or laid.