by Jarett Kobek
With Baby toiling away at the cinema, I drifted like a dandelion, crazy as a daisy, sally in the alley. Don’t you know that I invented a new role for myself? I spent the summer as the best little homemaker in all the East Village.
I found our beds, our couch, our lamps, our posters, our art. I even found us a cat, a twenty-seven-pound Maine Coon that I renamed Captain Jenks of the Horse Marine.
On St. Mark’s, I bought a copy of Liege & Lief, a terribly folky album with the most remarkable gatefold sleeve depicting different instances of the English ritual calendar year. An image of the Burry Man sent me to absolute distraction.
Friends dropped by, girls and boys from school. We imbibed, mostly alcohol, some marijuana. Baby even made acquaintances at his job, one or two of whom weren’t horrendous. They’d pop in and the boys would talk, at nauseating length, about Leonard Cohen and Trotsky.
Basically, it was home.
JUNE 1987
Spider-Man Gets Married
A friend from Parsons, Jeremy Winterbloss, paid us a visit. A rare occasion, as he was very busy with his internship at Marvel Comics.
“Tomorrow will be nuts,” he said. “I have to go to Shea Stadium.”
“Whatever for?”
“They’re marrying Spider-Man before the game. Stan Lee is officiating. All of us interns have to make sure the costumed characters don’t die from heat exposure. I’m the Incredible Hulk’s handler.”
It was all part of a publicity stunt in which Spider-Man married his longtime girlfriend, a buxom redhead named Mary Jane Watson who was given to saying things like, “Face it, Tiger, you just hit the jackpot!” and “Eat your heart out, Gwendolyn! This time little Mary Jane’s in the spotlight!”
The marriage occurred in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 and in the newspaper strip. Somehow this had been tied into a baseball game. Don’t ask me, darlings. I’ve read Guy Debord and I still don’t understand late-period capitalism.
“One good thing, though,” said Jeremy, “is that they’re having Spider-Man’s reception at Tunnel. Have you gone?”
“I’ve yet to attend,” said I.
“Why don’t you come?”
Jeremy opened his canvas messenger bag and removed a thick piece of pink paper. An invitation to the reception, with this awful little drawing of Spider-Man in a top hat, right hand swinging on his webbing, left hand clutching Mary Jane around her waist. The important words: “This invitation admits two guests.”
“I stole a few from work,” said Jeremy. “Tom DeFalco’ll never notice the difference. You should come and watch Captain America eat a piece of wedding cake.”
Baby and I selected clothes. Fashionable but not so bizarre that we’d stand out amongst individuals whose livelihood involved drawing Spider-Man punching Doctor Octopus.
When the jolly clock jolly well struck ten, we hailed a cab, disembarking at 27th and Twelfth. I shoved our way through the drooling masses who stood behind the velvet rope.
Baby worried that the hired thugs might shake us down for IDs, us being underage, but I laughed at my ingénue and said, “Honestly, Baby, you’ve got four corners and four equal sides! We’re special guests at this hellhole. They wouldn’t dare.”
The bouncer didn’t throw us a passing glance.
The owners had taken an old industrial train tunnel that ran through a warehouse and transformed it into a barebones dance floor, girders and beams exposed. The long passage ran the length of a city block. You could go to its end, put your fingers through a metal gate, and see tracks disappearing into darkness. Catwalks up above, and rooms running off the main drag, each with its own specific design. The bathrooms, such as they were, were crude unisex stalls, unglamorous shelters containing the great human tide in all of its indecorous horror, some things coming out of bodies and other things going in.
“Adeline,” whispered Baby. “What is this place?”
The invitation specified that Spider-Man’s wedding reception would take place in Tunnel Basement, the exclusive club-within-a-club. We found the entrance and again showed our invitation.
We were down beneath the Earth in a dark pit with a pathetic stage fronted by a minuscule dance floor, pressed against the filthiest couches that a human mind could conceptulate. Neither hide nor hair of Jeremy Winterbloss.
The strangest thing, reader? The superheroes dancing, surrounded by a crowd of unfortunate men and even more unfortunate women. If one wants to imagine the appearance of an afterlife in which the wicked are punished, one would do well to picture the Incredible Hulk boogie shuffling at Tunnel.
“What we need is strongest alcohol,” I said. Baby wandered off, leaving your old friend Adeline in a solitary stare, gandering with Clara Bow eyes at the dance floor, yet again reconsidering her choices in life.
After Kevin’s disappearance, I’d experienced dwindling interest in parties, in dance clubs, in the endless monotony of music and the movement of the human form. I had the growing sensation that this part of my life was approaching an inglorious end. Spider-Man began his electric slide.
A creeeeeepy middle-aged man struck up a conversation, telling me that he was an inker for Marvel. “What in the name of the Holy Trinity and the Prophet Mohammed,” I asked, “is an inker?” He droned on and on and on and on, saying something about the artwork of a man named Herb Trimpe.
On the other side of the room, Baby talked with what I assumed was another of Marvel’s creations come to life. When I drew upon them, I saw my mistake.
He was in deep conversation with a very swish young man who sported a Technicolor dreamcoat.
“Oh, I just love comic books,” said the young man. “I loooove fantasy and sci-fi and all of that! Have you ever seen the old soap opera Dark Shadows?”
“I’m glad you came over,” said Baby to me. “Meet Michael. He’s a party promoter.”
“How are you, gorgeous?” asked Michael. “I looove your little dress!”
Reader, take note of this unfortunate and disagreeable boy. His name was Michael Alig. By the end of this book, he and a friend will bash in the head of a drug dealer named Angel, pour Drano in the mouth of the dying man, leave the corpse to rot in the bathtub for over a week, chop up the body, put its remains in a box, and throw it into the Hudson River.
AUGUST 1987
Adeline Runs into Kevin at the Kiev
There I was, dour as a penniless Irishman on St. Paddy’s, walking out of the Kiev, a Polish restaurant at the corner of 7th and Second Avenue, where I’d eaten a heapload of pierogies in the back room, trying and failing to read The Slaves of New York.
My concentration was bustville because a geriatric woman wouldn’t stop yelling at the waitress, and the waitress, being a cooooooooold Ukrainian babushka, was hollering right back. I finished eating and paid my bill at the register.
I walked outside and directly into Kevin.
Every dramatic moment of my life seems to coincide with menstrual cramping. How does one describe waves of something within twisting into knots, trying to push its way out? I’d suffered it earlier that day, but it’d been slightly tempered by the distraction of my swollen breasts. The pain was why I’d gone for Kiev comfort.
The adrenaline rush of seeing Kevin brought on the full cramps, splitting me with the weight and the pressure.
“Darling,” I said, struggling not to grimace. “Funny seeing you here on, back on Second Avenue.”
“I thought you’d be in California,” he said.
“California is such a bore,” I said. “Besides, I couldn’t leave Baby.”
Don’t you know that Kevin turned red?
“We have an apartment,” I said. “By McSorley’s.”
“That place is all right,” he said. “I’ve been a few times.”
“Do you really want to talk about McSorley’s?” I asked.
“What else would we talk about?”
If you can believe it, there was a tight feeling in my chest, dissimilar from the pressure within my wom
b, like my body informing me that it had missed Kevin, that I’d sold him short, that I’d suppressed emotion.
“I have questions about your disappearing act.”
“What’s left to talk about?” he asked.
“You never got in touch,” I said. “I worried.”
“There wasn’t anything to say.”
Running my hands through that terrible hair, the way he slung his legs over mine when we slept, the freckled skin on his knuckles.
“Do you want to go somewhere?” I asked. “And talk, I mean.”
“I’ve made that mistake once,” he said. “I won’t make it twice.”
“What mistake?”
“I don’t think you ever even considered me,” said Kevin. “You never knew me. You never wanted to know me. I was like a character in the television show of your mind. You’re a bad person, and worse than that, you’re a lousy lay.”
“We can talk it through,” I said.
“You can’t repeat the past,” said Kevin.
“What do you mean you can’t repeat the past?” I asked. “Of course you can.”
FEBRUARY 1988
Baby and Adeline Go to Pasadena
I learned a lot from Hollywood, but nothing so much as the need to see matters through. Consider, for instance, getting fucked in the ass. At first it’s a deeply uncomfortable sensation, plunging into pain, but with a little hard work, you discover a world of pleasure, demanding more, more, MORE! It was Jaime who schooled me in that erotic art, screwing my brains out, and the streets of Hollywood were a blueprint, a machine designed to manufacture Jaime’s life.
Our woeful autumn of 1987 was dominated by Adeline suffering from a nervous breakdown, giving over to her basest impulses and paranoia. I came home every night and found her chain-smoking clove cigarettes, surrounded by strands of hair that she’d pulled from her head.
Her fixation on 84 Second Avenue had blossomed into true madness. She’d discovered that, in the late 1800s, the building served as a boardinghouse for homeless women. The Unfortunates. Adeline saw real significance in this connection, as if a malign force permeated the centuries, as if the property itself wreaked havoc on women.
The body of her research and knowledge went into a self-published zine, a Xeroxed work on which she labored with real obsession. For weeks, she sat arranging and rearranging artwork, fretting over it like a jigsaw puzzle, hoping to find the exact configuration by which she could unlock the mystery and free herself from its influence.
The title of this publication?
DRESS SUITS ON FIRE.
And of her conversation? The circuitry of her dialogue, the recurrent themes, the nonsense, the imagined persecution? Don’t even start me talking or I’ll tell everything I know.
When Christmas rolled around, I argued for time off. I suggested going to Los Angeles, to inexplicable Pasadena. Adeline demurred until I asked her to do it for me, saying that it was me, not her, who needed a jaunt to the West Coast. That it was me, not her, who couldn’t brave winter in NYC. Why don’t we stay with your mother?
It meant quitting my job, but I’d find another. The city’s managerial class loved a honky who submitted to menial labor. That was the terrible fact of life: my white ass would always be hired ahead of Black kids and Nuyoricans.
On February 1st, we boarded an airplane at Kennedy and zoomed across America, the Captain tucked beneath my seat, his feline brain zonked out on a fifth of a Valium. I ate the other four fifths, the drug lulling me into a fitful, unsatisfying sleep.
I woke thirty thousand feet above the Earth’s surface, peering through the window at the thick carpet of clouds, beneath which lay the flat expanse of the American heartland. I had no idea of our location but was dead certain that we were passing over my old home.
We disembarked. Adeline’s mother was waiting, her black Mercedes convertible parked at the terminal curbside.
—Adeline, she cried. Adeline, over here.
She needn’t have said a word. Her outfit was its own clarion call. Helen Keller couldn’t have overlooked that insane blue hat and its orange flowers.
—Baby! cried Adeline’s mother, throwing her arms around me.
The hug lasted an uncomfortable length. I let it linger as long as she liked.
—Oh my God, isn’t that a darling cat?
My mushy brain couldn’t comprehend Los Angeles. Billboards, ten-lane freeways, tunnels, endless cars, hours of asphalt, general stink of the air, thick gray smog destroying visibility, anemic palm trees hovering above the road. It went on forever, rolling before me like piss-poor video art. Adeline’s mother zoomed in and out of traffic, honking her horn, mumbling in exasperation at her fellow drivers.
—I’m so happy you guys are home. Baby, call me by my name, Suzanne. Will you do that for me?
—Sure, I said.
—Tell me everything about New York, said Suzanne. Tell me about school, about all the boys you’ve met, about your apartment, about the things you’ve seen. Don’t skimp on any details!
—I don’t really know what you, like, want from me, said Adeline. But I guess I can, like, tell you about school or something. It sucks. And uh the city? It sucks too. And uh boys? They suck the worst.
I giggled in the backseat, amused whenever Adeline lost her accent.
—You can sulk however you want, said Suzanne, I’ll talk to Baby. So Baby, how do you like New York?
—It’s the greatest place on earth.
—Pasadena won’t offer much competition, said Suzanne. Maybe you’ll find something or someone out here that you’ll like just as much.
Their house sat on a side street off South Orange Grove Boulevard. A high wall of vegetation rendered the building invisible from the street. While the telltale landscaping of the other homes was ostentatious, the buildings themselves were, essentially, normal. The kinds of houses found anywhere in America, in any city or town with a decent neighborhood.
Adeline’s house was the outlier, a gray nouveau-riche monstrosity, a sprawling rectangle with random peaks and haphazard Italianate windows. Back in the American Middle West, you encountered houses like Suzanne’s only when you made the mistake of reading Booth Tarkington. There sure wasn’t anything like it in New York.
Our first concern was establishing the Captain. Suzanne, or someone working for her, had purchased a litter box and food. We opened the Captain’s carrying case. The great giant lumbered out, sniffing at the air. I picked him up, getting a face full of paws, and showed him that we’d put the litter in a pantry, and that his food was in the kitchen. He looked bored and ran off.
—We had a dog, said Suzanne. His name was Brownie, a German Shepherd mix. Don’t you remember how much you loved Brownie, Adeline? You used to call him No-no. I’m too busy, really, to have another pet. It wouldn’t be fair.
My room on the second floor, two doors from Adeline’s, exuded a creepy antiseptic aura, the wood too polished and perfectly dusted, the bedding folded too crisp, too perfect. I tried out my mattress, a soft contrast with 31 Union Square West and East 7th Street, wanting to rest, but I couldn’t sleep within the total silence of Pasadena.
Each room of the ground floor opened into at least two others. I followed echoes of the human voice until I discovered Adeline and Suzanne sitting by a fire in the living room, surrounded by sofas.
—We were catching up! said Suzanne. But I have an appointment on the other side of town. You know how terrible traffic can be. There’s food in the fridge.
She grabbed my shoulder, nails digging in. Her footfalls went up the stairs.
There were bookcases but not many books. Mostly ceramic sculpture, plants, and records. So many records. One shelf hosted a cluster of family portraits. Photographs always bore me, and I don’t like thinking about family, but I’d never encountered a likeness of Adeline’s father, so I examined the collection.
And then I fucking saw it.
—Adeline, I shouted. What the fuck is this?
S
he walked over, almost catatonic, looking at what I held in my hands, a silver-framed portrait of Adeline, Suzanne, a man that I took for Adeline’s father, Adeline’s sister, Dahlia, and an unknown blond youth. The photographed Adeline was, at most, ten years old.
What unmanned me, driving cold shiver splinters up my spine, is that, accounting for changes in fashion, the blond youth could’ve passed as my twin.
—What does it look like? she asked. It’s a family portrait.
—But who the fuck, I asked, is this guy?
—That’s Emil, she said. My brother.
—You don’t have a brother.
—I did.
A miserable story poured out. Emil, her brother, born queer, born theatrical, with a penchant for old movies and vaudeville, out of place in 1970s Los Angeles, haunting the Silent Movie Theater. There was a minor scandal. Emil picked up and arrested while soliciting male tricks on Selma Avenue, rousted in a routine bust. His name ended up in the Pasadena Star-News, beneath the reproduction of his mug shot, a photograph in which, for whatever reason, Emil wore a white tuxedo. Wracked with shame, tormented with guilt, naked, exposed, he threw himself to his death, leaping off the Colorado Street Bridge down into the Arroyo Seco.
—So what else could I do, asked Adeline, when I saw you standing there, looking like a lamb about to be eaten by wolves?
FEBRUARY 1988
Suzanne Changes Baby’s Life
Suzanne sat at the kitchen table. Adeline was somewhere on the property. The kitchen was cavernous, a gigantic island stationed in its middle, cookware hanging from the ceiling.
—Baby! cried Suzanne. Just the person I wanted to see!
—I’m so tired, I said.
—Jetlag, said Suzanne. You’ll get over it. Everyone always does. Do you want any breakfast? We’ve got cereal or I could make you some eggs.
—Cereal, I guess.
She put the bowl in front of me. Heaps of shredded wheat floated in staid milk, a change from the sugar and chocolate abominations of my childhood. Suzanne sat beside me, staring, making me self-conscious, as if I was about to put too much into my mouth, as if milk would drip off my chin.