Rivington Was Ours

by Brendan Jay Sullivan

  A few minutes later she climbed into the DJ booth with her video camera running. “Woo! Lady Gaga and DJ VH1 know how to party!”

  We danced together in the booth, she in her heels and complicated bathing suit, writhing against me facing the crowd, while I reached around her slim waist to cue the next record. Gaga reached an arm over her head and grabbed the back of my neck. “Guess what, VH1?”

  “What, Gaga?”

  “I just broke up with my boyfriend!” She cupped my neck in her hand and pulled me down for a kiss. My lips felt like they had just touched betrayal.

  You can say a lot of things about me and most of them will be true. But I am not the kind of guy who does what I just did.

  RIGHT THEN—AS IF MY PHONE had a feed to the panopticon of downtown—I got a text from Guy: “Make sure she doesn’t do any drugs tonight.” My heart skipped and my paranoia scanned the room for any of his minions. Surely somebody just saw that dick-move I had just executed, making out with the girlfriend of the guy who fired me two hours ago. My stomach tied in knots, churning the food I had eaten only minutes before Guy had broken up with me.

  Gaga saw me with my phone in hand. Her eyes lit up. “Did you make the call?”

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  Another text—straight from the panopticon—came through then. “Heard you’re spinning at Don Hill’s,” The Devil said. “You got me at the door if I come by?”

  “Do you think it’s gonna pick up?” Gaga asked. “I could use the money.”

  “It’s gonna be okay,” I said. “Just dance. And we’ll work it out.”

  WHEN THE GOING GETS UNCOMFORTABLE, the uncomfortable get noncommittal. I didn’t respond to Guy or The Devil. I just wanted that night to disappear. I then came up on the most cowardly solution for the two of us: I would get us wasted. I marched over to the bar when another DJ came on, and I paid for two shots out of pocket and fed one to Gaga. “Woo!” she let out a sorority yelp.

  Nova walked over just then. “You kids are crazy.” He smiled. Gaga leaned down to me, a little bit tipsy, and said, “I don’t know if I want to perform.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I can perform in front of lots of people anytime. But I can’t go on stage like this. It’s just not right tonight.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “We’ll dance and have fun and we’ll deal with tomorrow when we have to deal with tomorrow.”

  “Do you think he’s upset?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He just wanted to make sure that I was with you and that you were okay.”

  “Did you tell him I was crying?”

  “I didn’t tell him anything. Let him wonder. Let him think about what he did for a day. Tomorrow it’ll be Sunday. He’ll go bowling and everyone will ask about you.”

  “Do you think,” she started, “do you think I should go by the bar on the way home and talk to him?”

  “No.” And I was glad that I found myself telling the truth. “Get back up there. I’m going to go on again and I want my go-go dancer to be up there killing it.”

  “I love you, Brendan.”

  “I love you too, Stef.”

  AS I TURNED AROUND, I looked over at the door and I saw The Devil’s face. He peered around the leather-jacketed ire of the door guy’s mullet and pointed toward me. In the nightlife pantomime I watched Mullet motion to the guest list on the clipboard. The Devil pointed to his watch and then motioned to an imaginary car waiting for him outside. Mullet shook his mullet, checked his watch, and spread his fingers out to say that since he had come late and not too many people had showed up he could let him in with one hand of fingers: “five dollars.” The Devil tried to make a deal with Mullet. He didn’t have any cash on him—but he would if you just let him in the door to talk to his DJ friend.

  I ducked behind the partition and Nova stopped me. “Hey, there’s a guy at the door who says he’s with you.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  Nova described The Devil to me. “Is he with you?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “The door guy says he forgot his ID but that he’ll let him in if you’ll vouch for him. You have room on your guest list.”

  “That’s okay.”

  I was so hard pressed, I called the woman that I love best

  The winter in New York bore a chill wind of salt and frozen construction projects into your skin. The icy breath of frigid breezes coursed through long, uninterrupted avenues, billowing up a caustic gust of sanded streets that pit your skin and battered your frozen ears. It slipped into the seams of your clothing. At night, your on-site landlord chuckled himself to sleep among a half dozen space heaters upstairs, snug as a chicken wing under the orange glow, while the rest of the building leaked gusts of cold wind on the chill metal of the lifeless radiator. And you shiver and toss under a half dozen blankets, wearing your winter hat in bed. Every time you ask about the heat, you’re met with a mixture of confused answers, grumbling about “going green,” and a condescending note about double-checking your windows’ latches. In the basement I cursed through the frozen tile floor and discovered a single unlatched window. The top of it folded down so you could clean the outside, and whoever had done this last never put it back on straight. I rattled the glass in the sill and clicked it back into place; gusts of cold air chilled my fingers at the two-inch opening of the chest-high window. With that on track, I slammed the window shut and the slapstick hinge buckled, smacking me in the forehead, blood dripping into my eyes.

  That night Gaga met me at Japonais in Union Square. She wore heels, fishnets, a chain belt, and her leather jacket. We had both gotten dumped by the same guy. “Didn’t you say you used to bartend for this company?” she asked.

  “Yes. I moved to Chicago after graduation and bartended for them for a little while and I was gonna start picking up shifts. Actually . . . something just occurred to me. If I hadn’t gotten fired from this company in Chicago I never would have moved to New York.”

  “Cheers to getting fired!” We clinked glasses.

  “You’re so upbeat today, what’s going on?”

  “My last recording session went very, very well.”

  “The Pussycat Dolls stuff?”

  She lifted an eyebrow as she took a sip from her birdbath. “It was supposed to be a Pussycat Dolls session. But it didn’t end up that way.”

  “What happened?”

  “I did what you said. I wrote honestly and I took what I was feeling inside and made it into something.” She went into detail about the feeling she had dealt with. The arguments she had over and over with Guy. The fights became mixed up in so many other things and all she wanted from him was the love. Behind the Killers’ party was the excitement of going on a date and that became “Boys Boys Boys.” Behind the fight over the trip to the islands was this feeling that they didn’t get to spend enough time together, as if he had to compete with her career. But she didn’t want any of that trouble. She didn’t want the stress. She just wanted his love. “And I know he loves money. You remember when you told him you couldn’t DJ on Sundays because you were going to start working at Pianos and he said, ‘Pianos is money’?”

  “It’s true.”

  “So I wanted to write something simple like that. I wanted to make it so simple that we didn’t have to fight about it. It’s like it wasn’t even that simple in my mind until I wrote that down.”

  “If even you don’t understand yourself until you read about it you’re officially a writer.” We cheers’d again.

  “Ever since then it’s the only way that it makes any sense. I can’t even remember being confused about it.”

  “Good for you. So it’s going to be a song or for that Pussycat Doll you told me about who wants to go solo?”

  She smirked and her eyebrow peaked sprightly. “No.” She took her time swallowing her drink, s
et it down on the paper coaster, and looked up at me, taking it all in. She had a dainty, almost robotic maturity to her movements now. “The vocal arrangement was too complicated so they had me make reference vocals for her. Akon heard my recording and he flipped.”

  “How’s it go?”

  She sang a song for me called “Money Honey.” The other patrons at the bar craned their necks with delight, their wineglasses ringing with the reverb of her angelic voice.

  “That’s so subversive.” I smiled. “Like how the Jag and the jet and the mansion are your LA life and your LA life makes your boyfriend jealous because it’s like another boyfriend.”

  “Wow.” She thought for a second. “You know what’s funny? You’re totally right but I didn’t think of it that way. When I imagined the Jag and the jet it was the ones I’d seen in LA. But the gifts and the islands were with him.”

  “So it’s different from the Elvis song.”

  “The what?”

  “The Elvis/Clyde McPhatter song ‘Money Honey.’”

  “I don’t know that one.”

  “I’ll send it to you.”

  “Okay and—”

  “Shit.” I put my glass down and glared at it.

  “What?”

  “That’s what I didn’t do with Nikki. I wanted to compete. I wanted to be bigger than fashion shows and expensive trips. But those were just more distractions. No wonder she left me for that fucking waiter. She didn’t want to be impressed, to be adorned. To sit around in bars after work while I scrounged up DJ jobs. She wanted someone to be on her frequency.”

  I looked over at Gaga. She had tried to explain this to me before but it took a song to understand it. I smiled. But I didn’t see my friend. I didn’t see the patient breakup buddy.

  “It’s not always about Nikki.”

  I retreated into my stool and looked down. She didn’t bring me here to talk about Nikki. “Do you have something you want to say to me?”

  “I—” she stumbled, her voice coming out strained, “I have something else I want to tell you. I am moving to LA and I’m just going to start over. I love the songs I have but while I have the label’s interest I’m going to get all the studio time I can. This changes the whole plan. Instead of me being the singer that toils away and lives in obscurity and makes a slow rise out of the clubs I’m just going to come out of nowhere and take my place at the top.”

  My eyes widened.

  I liked her plan. But it had nothing to do with us. We were the farm leagues for major label bands. Everyone knew a Stroke or had barbacked with the guys from TV on the Radio. We didn’t do pop creations. She had just scrapped the whole show. No more dive bar scene. Now it wouldn’t look like the old gang of her and Starlight in homemade costumes.

  “I’m going to come out on stage at an awards show where no one has ever heard of me. I’m going to blow away the entire crowd and all everyone is going to say is, ‘Who is that girl?’” Gaga straightened her fishnets with a devilish little grin. “And I’m going to come out on stage and sing the song for the first time in front of everyone. And I’m going to be in my underwear just to let everybody know that I don’t give a ffffuck what anybody else thinks.”

  THERE WAS AN EXCITEMENT IN the air as we took our twin stools at Beauty Bar later that night. Classic 45s spun around on all four turntables in the front room and back, and through the dimly lit chorus of gossiping thieves you could see the spotlight at the center of the room on a girl getting a manicure while sipping a cheap cosmo with her free hand. Heads bobbed to the music and with the stark transition from one single to another you could catch a few stray metal hands or the solitary approval of a happy scenester saying “Yes.”

  Kids smiled into their pints as they huddled together in warm, grateful masses. We watched the daily transactions of friends and lovers, and drugs circled through the crowd. Girls in tank tops shivered outside, wearing nothing thicker than a padded bra, their arms crossed over their goosebumped chests, patiently hoping their friends could smoke faster. When the single-stall bathroom opened, a cab- load of girls spilled out.

  Through the dark room, I could see the apparition of smiling faces, green-lit by the text messages they had been waiting for. Beauty Bar was a place where everybody knows they don’t need to be on the guest list, but their problems can’t get in the door.

  I really counted on that staying true. I didn’t know that this was going to be her good-bye party.

  “There’s more,” she announced. “I’m getting a nose job.” She faced the vintage chandeliers on the ceiling, turning her offending snout in the air. She had the air of a coed who had just discovered where she would put her first crappy tattoo.

  I slammed my Brooklyn Lager pint down. The bar took a sip. “No.”

  Shave-and-a-haircut. “Yep.” She drummed her fingers on the bar and tapped her nose twice. Two bits. A devilish grin filled her face. She said it so offhand. I think she put more thought into bleaching her hair.

  “No.”

  “It’s holding me back. Do you think I’d be songwriting this long if I looked like the girls you date?”

  “Songwriting is work. It’s good work. It’s—it’s not waiting tables.”

  “It’s slipping away from me.”

  “You cannot get a nose job.”

  “Might get a titty lift.”

  “That’s unacceptable. Also, you know you will lose all sensation in your nipples if you do that.”

  “It’s not a boob job. It’s just a lift.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Why? Afraid I’ll be your type?” She pushed the stirrer around in her martini glass and shimmied up to me on her stool, leaning her face into mine. “Now that I’m blonde and all. I’ll be the girl with a little ski-jump nose and a cute ass. Your exes will die.”

  “Just because I’m shallow doesn’t mean you can be.”

  She looked over at me and smiled. “I know you’re not shallow.”

  “I’m insecure. It’s way different.”

  “You’re not insecure.”

  “I know I am because I like hearing you tell me I’m not.”

  “You’re not insecure, baby. But you’re protecting someone who’s insecure. Inside of you, you have a little geeky Brendan who didn’t fit in and probably wore glasses.”

  “It was not cute.”

  “You have to spread your wings, buddy. You’re six foot two, you dress like a champion, and you have a nice, thick—”

  “Stop it.”

  She shrugged. “What? Girls talk.”

  “You let those Los Angeles people into your head, Gaga. Stop it. Stop them before they destroy everything good about you.”

  “You don’t know what I’ve been through over there. It’s new. It’s opening up my way of thinking.”

  “You’re just . . . you’re saying things. You’re like I was when Nikki and I broke up.”

  “For once can it not be about Nikki?”

  That stung. We had done nothing for the past two months but talk about her goddamn boyfriend.

  We sat in silence together. Great going-away party. Like I said, the one whose name is least secure on the guest list shows up first. It’s me.

  The bartender walked over to say hi. “What’s the latest?”

  “Stef’s getting a boob job.” I put down my pint. It didn’t even taste good. “And a nose job.”

  “Tonight?” the bartender asked.

  “I’m trying to talk her out of it.”

  “Tell her to try and watch a nose job on video. You’ll never make it through the first two minutes. They use a hammer. Like the kind of hammer Amish people use to build furniture.”

  “That’s what you want, Stef?” I said, dadlike. “You want your face to be Amish furniture.” I put on my best I’m-not-upset-just . . . disappointed face.

  “No one will know. No one has heard of me. You won’t even be able to tell. But I will.”

  “This is just wrong. It sends the wrong message. You’re
basically telling your fans that it’s okay to hate themselves. You’re saying that they should all be like you and buy their way into loving themselves.”

  “Just drop it.”

  “I won’t. Haven’t you ever seen Warhol’s ‘Before/After’?”

  She looked at me blankly, swallowing a gulp.

  “It’s in the Met. I know the Upper East Side is far but it’s worth going. Tell me they let Upper West Side girls go to the Met. Here . . .” I looked up the picture. This silk screen looked like an early Shepard Fairey piece with stencil elements, thick outlines, and streaked black paint. The top box says “Before” with a picture of a face with a nose that might be mine, might be Woody Allen’s, might be Gaga’s. The face’s haggish eyes—combined with that nose—make it look like it belongs to a witch, only without the wart. The “After” box shows a tiny ski-jump nose with a jaunty little button at the end. I have a crush on the second girl because I am shallow. At the very top Warhol simply printed the word “RAPED.”

  She stared at the image until the screen went to sleep, and she didn’t say another word.

  “I’m cut in another hour,” the bartender interrupted, bringing us both back down to earth. “You want to do another shot?”

  Gaga looked up, still lost somewhere in the Met, and nodded her head in dumbfounded silence.

  THAT LAST SHOT PUT US close to the edge. But not over it. We rode alongside it, feeling the exhilaration of youth in its unallowable future. We collapsed on each other’s shoulders. We apologized for being bad friends. We put the blame on jet lag, empty cupboards and empty wallets. We told the other they were perfectly welcome to do and say whatever was right. No judgments among friends. That night we felt like anything was possible. And it was. I had to admit that it was possible that I was going to miss my new friend.

  “Where do you feel love in your body?”

  She thought for a minute. “In my stomach.”

  “Describe it to me—in your belly button? Your chest?”