Why Aren't You Smiling?

by Alvin Orloff

  The marionette master jerked me to my feet and set me to following him. In one motion, I gulped the last of my soda and tossed the can at a nearby waste-bin. My aim was, however, poor as always and the can missed, ricocheting off the top of the receptacle. Startled by the noise, the boy I’d been following turned around just in time to see me retrieve the can and dispose of it properly. He caught me looking at him and smiled. My heart froze and my legs buckled. I landed on the sidewalk in a sitting position with a painful thud.

  The boy came over to me. “You OK?”

  I had no words with which to express the welter of emotions I felt as I looked into his hazel green eyes, so I just nodded my head.

  “Here.” The boy took my arm and helped me up. “Do you speak?” He thought I was mute! Though being mute sounded appealing just at that moment, I couldn’t tell a lie.

  “I can talk.”

  “Did you faint?” The boy, every bit as handsome from the front as in profile, grinned. “You look kinda pale. C’mon, I’ll buy you a drink.” This proposal was so unexpected, so sophisticated and adult, that I was again struck dumb.

  “My name’s Gabe, by the way.”

  “Leonard,” I croaked, my voice coming out as a whisper due to my nervously constricted throat.

  Gabe kept up a running monologue as we walked, most of which was incomprehensible. “This bar is great, they never ID. And the guys there are scrum-diddley-umptious! Beef, chicken, and everything in between. You’re a bit on the porky end yourself, but you do have youth on your side. Make hay while the sun shines, I always say.”

  The way Gabe spoke without pauses made him sound mentally ill, like one of the babblers who spare-changed around the university. Every time I looked at him, though, all I could think was that I wanted us to be very good friends. Soon enough we were outside a small hole-in-the-wall bar from which loud disco music blared.

  Gabe pushed though the front doors as if he owned the place and I followed. The inside was dark but once my eyes adjusted I saw that it was what the Christians of yore would have called a Fleshpot. The space was evenly divided between a tiny dance floor on which perhaps a dozen men writhed under bright flashing lights, and a bar, around which another dozen men drank, chattered, whooped, and cackled. The only female present was a Filipina-looking woman at the bar wearing a slinky white dress and high heels. A man whispered in her ear and she let out a deep masculine laugh that utterly jarred me. In the corner, two guys in short shorts, mirrored sunglasses, and yellow hard hats were making out with wild abandon. I was in a gay bar.

  Gabe pointed to a bench in a corner. “Go sit, I’ll be right back.” He disappeared into the small crowd vying for the attention of the lone bartender. I’d once seen a gay bar on a made-for-TV movie about a boy whose father turned out to be homosexual. Compared to this place, the TV bar looked like a country club. In fact, the scene around me resembled a multi-ethnic remake of the scene in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments when the Hebrews went berserk and worshipped the Golden Calf with a wild orgy.

  Gabe reappeared and handed me a yellow concoction in a short glass. “Vodka pineapple. Full of vitamins. Good for whatever ails ya.”

  “Thanks.” I tried a sip and discovered it mostly sweet, but slightly poisonous.

  “Listen,” said Gabe, looking slightly amphibian under the weird bar lights, “I’ve got some business to attend to. You look OK now. Hope you don’t go fainting again. Bye.” He darted off to join a fat man in a suit at the doorway and left. I wished he’d come back. I could see us roaming the world together, partners in the search for enlightenment. Would he be Siddhartha and I Govinda, or vice versa?

  I didn’t have time to ponder this because suddenly I became acutely conscious of being a fish out of water. Most of the men around me sported mustaches or beards with shockingly short hair while I was clean-shaven with long, luxuriant locks. And while I wore modest clothing, loose and humbly colored in earth-tones, they wore bright, tight, skimpy disco-wear that showed off their bodies. And what bodies! These men had bulging biceps, strong chests, and athletic poise. Were anyone to notice me, they’d surely see a pathetic clumsy oaf.

  Suddenly thirsty, I downed the rest of my drink. As I put my glass down on the bench beside me, a man in red short shorts and a tank top came out of nowhere and shoved a tiny bottle under my nose. “Here, Sweetchips!” he sang out. Before I knew what was happening, I’d inhaled something noxious. “C’mon!” said the man, grabbing my hands and pulling me to my feet.

  My head began throbbing painfully in time with the music. “What did you just do? What was that?”

  He gave me a funny look. “Ain’tcha never seen poppers?”

  “What?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

  The man dragged me onto the dance floor then released my hands and began swiveling his body. Out of politeness, I tried to dance but the spirit of the music eluded me. I’d danced before, alone in my room, but this music was different, so fast, so smooth, so relentless. The lyrics were utterly different, too. There were no symbolic puzzles, no horses with no name, no buying of stairways to heaven, no one tin soldier riding away. As I clumsily flailed my body, I was seized with a wave of nausea.

  “Child, you look positively green, are you gonna be OK?” asked the man in a voice that was musical, ironic, and concerned, all at the same time. To be heard over the music he’d put his face right up to mine and I could smell something minty on his breath. This somehow caused the nausea in my throat to solidify. I raced towards the men’s room. Inside the gleaming, tiled space I found the one stall unoccupied and ducked inside just in time to spew a trickle of vomit into the toilet.

  “Baby, you is in some condition, isn’t you?” I queasily stood up, turned around, to see the man from the dance floor. He stood at the stall’s door, hands on hips, shaking his head with pursed lips. “Poor thing with yo head in the toilet. I suspects you is what we call an ‘ingénue’ and has not yet learned to drink yer likker like a man yet, am I right?”

  “I’m OK, I just feel a little queasy.”

  “Well, not to worry. My name is Jordan. You can call me Jordy, and I’m here to help.” He flashed something halfway between a smile and a smirk. Despite his athletic clothes and facial hair – he sported long sideburns that connected with a droopy mustache – I sensed something exceedingly un-male about Jordy, though it wasn’t really feminine either.

  “I’m OK now,” I croaked weakly.

  Jordy leaned past me into the stall and flushed the toilet with a look of exaggerated disdain. “The fruits of wickedness do not always smell particularly delicious.” He minced out of the stall and leaned against the tiled wall as I rinsed my mouth with water from the sink faucet. “Is this the first time you have set your tender little foot inside this here den of iniquity? I can’t say that I rightly recall seeing you before.”

  The throbbing in my head began to subside. “Yeah, I wasn’t planning to come here. I was out walking…”

  Jordy chuckled. “And you just happened to find yourself in a gay bar.”

  “I’m on a quest,” I explained. “Trying to gain wisdom by experiencing the illusory world of suffering and striving… what we Buddhists call Samsara.”

  Jordy’s eyes rolled heavenward. “Now I’ve heard everything.”

  His suspicion annoyed me. “See, you can find one sort of wisdom by withdrawing from the world, another kind by living in it. I want to experience the world.”

  Jordy’s eyebrows shot up. “The whole thing?”

  “And, and… to make sense of suffering I had to be with the downtrodden here in the city, like, you know, when Siddhartha left the palace to wander among the people.”

  Jordy nearly gasped. “You aren’t joking, are you? You’re what, sixteen, seventeen?”

  “Time is an illusion.”

  Jordy fanned himself with his hand as if he were overheating. “Lord, have mercy!”

  I felt the need to explain myself further so as not to sou
nd ridiculous. “I’m hoping to detach myself from desire. I know it’s not something you can do in one lifetime; I’ll probably have to get reincarnated a bunch of times before I achieve Nirvana.”

  Jordy stared at me with an expression of pure shock. “I see.”

  “I guess I should try and understand this place. Siddhartha spent a long time with Kamala, a courtesan who taught him the art of love. Physical love, I mean, not spiritual all-encompassing Love. I used to be a Christian and very into Love, but now I’m just trying to detach. This place here is for gays, right?”

  “You got that right, Baby. This here disco is for gay homosexual faggots.”

  The smells of the bathroom, disinfectant, urine, and vomit began nauseating me. “I think I’d better get outside. Thank you for the, uh… what were they? Poppers?”

  “Yeah. By the way, what’s your name?”

  “I’m Leonard. It’s been very nice meeting you.”

  I gave Jordy a little wave then marched out of the bathroom, wiggled my way through the crowd and out the front door. The music was almost as loud outside as it was inside and half a dozen men stood against the front of the bar, scanning the street in front of them with hungry eyes. I stood for a second, wondering in which direction the bus terminal lay. My parents would be wondering where I was.

  Jordy popped out of the door. “Going home so soon? Did you at least get to have a little fun in there before Veera Vomit made her cameo?”

  “I wasn’t looking for fun,” I explained. “Fun is just meaningless sensory stimulation.”

  “If you don’t have any fun,” said Jordy. “You turn into a mean, bitchy ol’ witch and make everyone around you miserable.”

  “I’m trying to chose the path of compassion instead of the path of selfish gratification,” I explained.

  A clean-shaven man in his early twenties, just my height only stocky and cinnamon colored, ambled over to us. “Well, Miss Jordy, what have you found here?”

  “Wayward waif,” said Jordy.

  The man looked me over and frowned. “Jordy, he’s too young. Throw him back.”

  Jordy grew mock indignant. “This poor chile was retchen up somethin’ horrible in that foul, stanky ol’ bathroom in there. Someone had to see he got out to the street safely. Cradle-robbing was the very last thing on my mind.” Jordy put a hand on my shoulder in a proprietary manner. Unused to friendly physical contact, I had to suppress a flinch.

  “Just doing your Christian duty, huh?”

  Jordy grew indignant. “Hardly!” He raised his nose imperiously. “It has always struck me as a great tragedy that any lion should ever go to bed hungry when the world is so very full of juicy, delicious Christians.”

  “I wonder what the penalty for statutory rape is in this state?” Jordy’s friend asked. “Back in Texas where I come from, they just shoot you.”

  “I hear tell crackers’ll shoot you for the sheer fun of it,” replied Jordy. He pointed at his pal. “This creature with the bedroom eyes here is Miguel, which is Mexican for Michael.” Miguel’s eyes were indeed bedroomy, wide and possessed of long, dark lashes that fluttered in a manner I found slightly hypnotizing.

  My scalp tingled as I squeaked out a little “Hi.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Miguel, moving out of the doorway to make room for a man staggering from the bar. The man’s eyes were glazed, his brow sweaty, and his balance so off-kilter he immediately walked into the wall.

  Miguel rolled his eyes. “Miss Timothy has such a zest for living.”

  “Zest for Quaaludes more like it,” Jordy replied. He turned to Timothy. “Girl, pull yourself together! Go home and sleep it off.”

  Timothy looked up and squinted. “Would one of you kind gentlemen call me a taxi?”

  Jordy, Miguel, and three of the men leaning against the bar simultaneously roared, “You’re a taxi!”

  “Walked right into that one, just like the wall,” laughed Jordy. He stepped into the street and hailed a passing Yellow Cab. Timothy was lifted, then pushed into it by good Samaritans, and whisked away.

  “Will he be OK?” I wondered out loud, thinking of the numerous educational films in which wayward youngsters were felled by a pill or a puff of the wrong drug.

  “He leaves that way every night,” explained Miguel. “I told him, ‘Honey, your key to social success is Big Entrances, not Big Exits,’ but he won’t listen.”

  “Uh, uh, uh! These chirren ain’t got the sense God gave a horsefly,” snapped Jordy with a censorious shake of the head.

  “Tell it, Mammy!” said Miguel.

  It suddenly hit me that Jordy was imitating Hattie McDaniel, the lovable maid from any number of ancient movies I’d seen on TV. This struck me as being in questionable taste, but Miguel was nowhere near white and he didn’t seem offended so I let it go.

  With Timothy gone, both men turned their attention back to me. “You know, Miguel, Leonard here is on some sorta highly spiritual quest. I think he might be a saint in training.”

  Jordy’s slightly sarcastic tone was irritating. I turned to Miguel and tried to explain. “I’m trying to understand The World so I can transcend its snares and illusions and find Peace. I used to be a Christian, a Cathar actually, but that didn’t work out so now I’m more of a Buddhist. Or maybe I should say I’m interdenominational. I believe that no one faith has a monopoly on wisdom.”

  Jordy stage-whispered, “I think he’s a virgin.”

  “I don’t want to get wrapped up in the material, sensual world,” I continued, ignoring Jordy. “I’m seeking a higher plane.”

  Miguel shot me an undecided look. “OK, that’s different. I can dig that. You’ve got your own trip going on.”

  I felt relieved. Miguel understood me. Feeling reckless, I asked, “What do you think the meaning of life is?”

  Miguel thought for a moment, an operation that twisted his face into a mask of puzzlement. “I never really considered it. Well, that’s not true. My parents were Catholic. I went to church, took communion.”

  “Are you still a Catholic?”

  “Catholic?” Miguel sounded perplexed. Suddenly his eyes turned to the door then back to me, widened by a theatrical expression of delight. “Oh my God, they’re playing Jungle Boogie! We gotta dance!” He grabbed my hand and darted through the door, towing me inside. On the crowded dance floor, Miguel released me and instantly started shimmying around like a fish out of water, but somehow (amazingly) in time with the music.

  I tried to mirror Miguel’s moves, but my body remained jerkily out of sync. He’d step to the left, but by the time I followed, he was already stepping to the right. He’d clap, spin, throw his arms up, and return to his original position while I was still on the clap. I found it impossible to keep up without knowing what steps were coming next – if indeed he wasn’t just making it all up as he went along. Still, I wanted to experience Dance, so I tried and tried, growing ever more frantic and clumsy until finally I stumbled over my own leaden feet, almost falling over. My embarrassment nearly propelled me off the dance floor as it had on so many sports fields, but something (perhaps the marionette master) made me stay. Miguel must have noticed my distress because he shouted out over the music, “Close your eyes!” I hesitated, fearing that I’d fall over completely or crash into someone. Miguel pointed to his own eyes and blinked several times to encourage me.

  I closed my eyes and all was dark except for the occasional flash of color from the blinking disco lights through my eyelids. The music, so loud it throbbed through my muscles and bones, became my world. The male lead vocal growled and grunted about something called Jungle Boogie while the back-up singers advised me – nay, commanded me – to get down, get down. For a short, dark eternity I flailed randomly, praying I’d miraculously acquire the ability to dance by osmosis. I couldn’t concentrate though as my mind was flirting with delirium, a sense of utter unreality. Even in a day full of so much unexpected strangeness, to find myself dancing in a disco struck me as astoundingly
weird.

  To make sure I wasn’t dreaming, I pinched myself and opened my eyes. There was Miguel, suave as ever, dancing away as a new set of girls sang, “Fly, Robin, Fly! Right up to the sky!” I then chanced to glance down and was shocked to discover that my arms and legs had fallen into the rhythm of the song, each making one swift, satisfying motion for every beat. Somehow my body had figured out this dancing business on its own. I was, for all intents and purposes, gettin’ funky.

  The music went on and on, each song seamlessly blending into the next, but instead of growing weary with exertion, my limbs became lighter and lighter. My mood, too, seemed to acquire a sort of weightlessness. As I danced through the next song and the next, my head emptied the way I’d always tried to make it during my attempts at meditation, leaving nothing but an animal contentment. There were no thoughts of God, the Truth, Samsara, Siddhartha, karma, Love, Rick, my parents, or the kids at school. There was just me, slightly delirious but wildly happy, and I was dancing in boogie wonderland.

  Rick

  1981

  Revelations

  Oh, he’s doing the Lord’s work, that’s for sure!” Rick suppressed a grimace. The elderly parishioner, Claire, was talking about President Reagan again.

  “Communists, gays, and godless liberals, he’ll be putting them in their place.” Claire’s mouth contorted into a sadistic smirk.

  Rick spoke mildly. “Remember, now… Christ beseeched us to love our enemies.”