Friends and Traitors

by Jarett Kobek

—No comment, I said.

  The phone rang. I let the machine pick up. Another reporter.

  I left my apartment.

  Owen’s piece wasn’t written overnight. He had talked to Freeze. Alig must have known what was coming. Michael must be back in town. I couldn’t imagine him missing this defining moment in his own myth. Cover stories were too fabulous.

  A club kid named Jenny Talia worked on St. Mark’s at Trash and Vaudeville, a store from the early punk movement reduced to supplying mawkish clothing to bewildered teenagers from Nassau County. The latest and the last. Like an aging film star watching her starring roles in a darkened room.

  Jenny Talia was another of the ones that I barely knew. Crop of more recent vintage. Four things stood out. Her piercing blue eyes. She’d modeled in a CK Jeans campaign. Her dimple piercings. Her bald, bald head.

  When I arrived at Trash and Vaudeville, Jenny Talia wasn’t there. A dopey kid behind the counter said that she worked part time and hadn’t been taking many shifts. I asked if he knew Michael Alig.

  —No, he said. But I heard he’s back in town.

  I started out the door. The kid called me back.

  —Hey, buddy, he said, you wanna score?

  As I was in the East Village, I figured that I’d visit Adeline. I stood beneath her window and hollered.

  She popped her head out, waved, and retreated inside. The weirdness of not having a key never disappeared, no matter how many times that I visited. She opened the front door.

  —Emil is all slumber, she said, so we must be reasonably quiet.

  —You know me, I said.

  —There’s another issue, she said.

  —Which is?

  —Jon’s upstairs. He’s on his lunch break.

  —Should I leave?

  —You’ll have to remake his acquaintance at some point, she said. When better than the now?

  Anyhoo, there was no escape. He’d heard me shouting in the street. I had the uncharitable thought that straight women could be such incredible fools. Taking back Jon. He’d screwed the brains out of her childhood best friend!

  Jon sat at the kitchen table, a pained expression on his face. Maybe he was worried that I’d beat out his stuffing. Maybe he was disgusted that he too must make nice. Who can say with people?

  Jon stood and shook my hand.

  —Baby, he said. Let’s not think about what happened.

  —Fine with me, I said.

  With the fantastical exception of Thomas Cromwell, Adeline’s men had always come in two varieties. She liked them filthy, as in East Village scum, or she liked them awkward. She’d shown me a picture of Emil’s father. His appearance was of no particular surprise, him being one of those men incapable of experiencing comfort within their own flesh. He was handsome enough. Her men were always handsome. But Nash Mac looked as if he’d bought his clothes two sizes too small and then, through sheer use, expanded them two sizes too large.

  The rediscovered Jon was in neither category. Beclad in a suit, he was a new man. It wasn’t a good suit, but it was a suit and it fit. His tattoos were hidden beneath a button-up. His hair, once the staging ground of grime and grit, was washed and combed and held in place by chemical products.

  He sat down. Adeline sat beside him. He touched her hand.

  —We’ve been reading this book, he said. It’s incredibly funny.

  A small paperback on the kitchen table. A piece of erotic kitsch called WANT-AD WANTONS.

  —Jesus, I said, why?

  —Baby, said Adeline, don’t you know that these works are hilarious? This one is rather a delight. It’s about a terribly bitter man named Lou who picks up a bored divorcée named Terry. The pickup occurs only a few hours after he’s mailed out responses to personal ads in a swinger’s magazine. Lou’s had a drought, but Terry brings the rain. They go wild in his basement bachelor apartment. Then couples start answering his letters, so Lou goes and makes love to a woman named Rita while her submissive husband watches. Rita and her hubby invite Lou to an orgy and suggest that he take Terry. Lou asks Terry and Terry agrees. They go to the orgy and, good lord, Baby, does Lou ever get lucky. As does Terry. From there, as you might imagine, matters ensue.

  —Tell him about the orgasms, said Jon.

  —The book has a delightful little vernacularism, said Adeline. Whenever a character achieves orgasm, they ‘shoot over the top.’ We thought it was coded language for ejaculation, but soon enough Terry and Rita are shooting over the top, too. Simply everyone in Lou’s world shoots over the top.

  —How does it end? I asked.

  —We haven’t gotten that far, said Jon. We’re only at the part where Terry and Lou make it with a liberated Black couple.

  I urinated in the closet and pulled the chain. Back in the kitchen, I sat in the only empty chair. I’d spent ten years thinking that I knew everything about Adeline, but Jon must know things about her that I didn’t. It was a strange thought.

  Emil yelled from Adeline’s bedroom. Jon was up before me.

  —Don’t worry, he said.

  He disappeared into Adeline’s bedroom. The walls were thin enough that I could hear him talking with the child. The boy’s laugh carried through the closed door.

  —Jon’s very capable with Emil, she said. They’ve taken to each other. Things are going so very well.

  —Have you met his family yet? I asked.

  —His mother and his brother, she said. The mother was cold. The brother loved my child.

  —It’s good for Emil, I said. Between you and Frances and your mother, he’s probably overdosed on second hand estrogen.

  —I do hope it isn’t too awkward.

  She flipped through the pages of WANT-AD WANTONS.

  —What a silly book, she said.

  —Adeline, have you seen today’s Voice?

  —I attempt to avoid that rag, she said. I become ever so depressed by the constant stream of new films that I’m missing. If I’m lucky, I can manage one flicker a week, and rarely am I lucky.

  I opened my messenger bag and took out the Voice.

  —What in the name of Jesus Cristo? she asked.

  —Read the story, I said.

  She pored over the pages.

  —Baby, she said, what are you going to do?

  —This has nothing to do with me, I said. I haven’t seen Michael in over a year. I have a new book coming out.

  SEPTEMBER 1996

  Baby and Adeline See Freaks

  Summer disappeared, bleeding into September, into the month of publication. I spent August in paralysis, worried about the meaning of another book in the world. I hardly wrote, barely saw anyone, barely even bothered with gossip about Michael Alig.

  It was impossible to ignore the travails of Peter Gatien. On August 20th, the US Attorney hit him with new charges. Conspiracy to distribute cocaine. On August 24th, the NYPD arrived after midnight and shut down Tunnel and Limelight. When the police arrived, both clubs only had about three hundred attendees. Cop symbolism. Public theater. It’d all gone away a long time before.

  Parker convinced me to be interviewed by Mim Udovitch about Michael Alig. Udovitch was writing an article for Details. As I wanted to maintain the illusion of reclusivity, I insisted that we speak by telephone. I thought that I’d acquitted myself well, but the article wasn’t coming out until the end of the month, about two weeks after Saving Anne Frank. My release date was the 17th.

  The only relief from my nervous stupor came in the form of Adeline’s suggestion that we go to the Film Forum.

  —What’s playing? I asked.

  —A hot property in which I suspect you’ll have the greatest of interest.

  —It’s not Pink Narcissus, is it? I can’t stand another screening of Pink Narcissus.

  —Nein, fräulein. It’s a work by your great enemy. Better known as Tod Browning. They’re showing Freaks.

  —I can’t, I said. I’m haunted.

  —We must face our fears, she said. Besides, Jon’s wat
ching Emil. You wouldn’t deny a girl the right to see a rare film on the big screen with her best friend, would you? Please say you ain’t that sort of dude, dude.

  I relented. I always relented with Adeline. I’d spent ten years relenting.

  The Film Forum had relocated from Watts Street to West Houston. Right off Varick, about a block and a half from the Dover Bookstore. I considered leaving an hour early and then browsing the stacks but had come to the conclusion that my apartment was overflowing with unread books. At the very least, I refused to buy any more until I’d read one particular volume that I’d lugged around for years. A verse translation of De rerum natura by Lucretius.

  Adeline arrived well before me. Thoughts of Freaks slowed my pace. Those little pinhead children had doomed me for the better part of four years. Why would I subject myself to them again? For the same reason that I subjected myself to so many things.

  Adeline had whined. I couldn’t say no.

  I walked into the lobby.

  —Fancy seeing you here, she said.

  —Someone invited me. It wasn’t my idea.

  —Cease being such a stick-in-the-mud, she said. I bought your ticket.

  Freaks had attracted enough of a crowd that people lined up against the lobby’s right wall. The middle-aged couple behind us talked about optimizing language design. I had no idea what they meant, but their voices kept me from meditating on the forthcoming experience.

  The film played in the smaller second screen. Despite my predilection for hanging on aisles, Adeline insisted that we sit in the middle seats of the middle row. We ended up boxed. Leaving was impossible, but I comforted myself with the thought that the runtime was only sixty-two minutes.

  The theater lights darkened. There it was. Tod Browning’s Freaks. All the horror that MGM could offer the year of 1932. I was prepared for anything but what I saw, which was a badly acted melodrama about life among circus performers.

  We open with a full-size trapeze artist named Cleopatra trying to seduce a midget named Hans. Hans is engaged to Frieda, another midget. This does not deter Cleopatra. She’s interested in Hans because Hans, flattered by her attention, lavishes her with gifts.

  The film’s focus is primarily anthropological, offering vignettes of its titular characters. The cast is comprised of about twenty different freaks. The pinhead girls are given the most prominence, but this takes nothing away from a limbless man lighting his cigarette, a woman without arms using cutlery, a legless man’s graceful agility, or Koo-Koo the Bird Girl.

  Frieda takes her concerns to Cleopatra, warning the gargantuan blonde away from her man and accidentally letting slip that Hans is the heir to a great fortune. Cleopatra and Hercules, the resident strongman with whom she is making whoopee, conspire to get Hans’s money. This culminates in an off-camera wedding.

  We jump forward to the wedding reception. Hercules, Cleopatra, Hans, and the other freaks sit around a banquet table. As she’s married Hans, the freaks decide to initiate Cleopatra into their coven of deformity. A midget brings out a loving cup, which they fill with wine and pass around the table while singing a song that goes: Gooble, gobble / we accept her, we accept her / one of us, one of us!

  If I could have left, I would have. But we were boxed.

  Cleopatra is horrified by possible membership in this club. She grabs the loving cup and throws its wine at the freaks. She storms away.

  From there, it all ends in horror.

  On our way out of the Film Forum, we passed by Gilda’s Club, an establishment with a very prominent red door. I couldn’t imagine its purpose. I asked Adeline. She had no idea, but suggested a social club for the nouveau riche.

  —That was less disturbing than I’d imagined. The pinheads gave me waves of acid resonance until I saw them for what they were. True innocents. But goddamn it, that song. Gooble gobble.

  —Have you ever heard “Pinhead” by The Ramones?

  —When did I ever care about punk?

  —If by some quirk you do develop an unhealthy interest, listen to “Pinhead.” The Ramones sing the gooble gobble song, but they’ve got the wording wrong.

  —I’ll consider it, I said. I’ve had enough of little pinhead girls for one lifetime.

  —You do realize, asked Adeline, that the lead pinhead, the one they call Schlitzie, was a man, don’t you? They put the creature in a dress because he couldn’t control his bodily functions, but that pinhead was a man. He used to dance in MacArthur Park for money.

  It was around the three Brutalist towers that comprise NYU’s faculty housing. That’s when Adeline told me.

  I was looking at the buildings and thinking how hilarious it was that the ol’ alma mater forced its professors to live within failed modernist experiments. They were probably lovely inside, but from the exterior, it seemed as if the university housed its faculty in projects. They were designed by I. M. Pei.

  Anyhoo, it was around there that Adeline let loose her revelation.

  —Baby, she said, I’ve asked Jon to move in with me and Emil. Technically, it’s taken place. Technically, he’s resided on 7th Street for the last week.

  —Please say that you aren’t getting fucking married.

  —Dear lord, no, she said. I’d never consider that barbaric rite.

  —You’re going to live in sin?

  —Jon and I won’t simply live in sin, she said. We’ll wallow in it until we drown.

  When we neared the Angelika, I read the marquee and noted that Trainspotting was playing. All of New York was talking about Trainspotting. People on the street, reviews, television. I hadn’t seen it.

  —So Jon’s watching Emil?

  —Yes, she said.

  —Let’s see Trainspotting.

  —My child expects his mother.

  —Freaks was only an hour long! What’s the point of a live-in boyfriend?

  We saw Trainspotting. It’s about junkies in Scotland who shit the bed and overdose. These junkies accidentally kill a baby, get drunk, spew blood everywhere. I understood why it drove people wild. The movie was terrible, but terrible in its moment. A new wave of filmmaking, a hyperkinetic style scored with perfectly curated songs selected from the last thirty years of white people’s popular music, highlighting fundamentally lower-income concerns in the high-camp titillation of the ruling classes. An after-school special disguised as hard living. A sermon on the mount delivered not by a radical firebrand but from the mouth of a baby boomer who believed in his ability to separate hepcats from squares.

  —What a bore the ’90s are, said Adeline. No wonder Michael Alig killed his drug dealer.

  SEPTEMBER 1996

  Baby Does an Event at the Union Square Barnes & Noble

  I agreed to a book tour. Doubleday asked if I wanted a launch party, to which I replied that I’d do it only if they could guarantee the attendance of that fat little fuck Norman Mailer. I had visions of a banquet table and passing around a loving cup and singing about accepting the great toad into our fold.

  Inquiries were made. Mailer refused. I said no launch party, but a book tour, okay, fine.

  My inaugural event took place on the fourth floor of the Barnes & Noble in Union Square, about one hundred yards away from the front door of 31 Union Square West. I don’t know what it was. Without fail, my life came back to Union Square.

  Doubleday’s publicist met me outside. She introduced the people from Barnes & Noble who’d be helping with the event, and then they all went and gossiped about Jay McInerney and frozen watermelons.

  I stayed on the fourth floor, hanging around by the biography section, worried that no one would come. Then I worried because so many people filled the seats. A horde waiting to see me talk. I’d been convinced that no one would show. I hadn’t prepared a single word. I hadn’t even chosen passages to read.

  One of the handlers pulled me to the side. I endured the grueling experience of hearing my fake biographic blurb being read aloud. I ran up to the microphone. There was a sea of pink faces,
staring into me, staring through me. I could only talk, so I talked. And talked. And talked. And talked. And talked. And talked.

  I said so much that I’m not even sure what the hell I said. Forty minutes later, I figured that I’d done enough. Adeline was in the front row. She went from the proud to the enthralled to the disinterested to the utterly bored.

  I asked if the audience had questions. I said that I’d answer anything. A great silence as people shifted in their seats. Someone in the back raised their hand.

  —Yes?

  —I really loved Trapped Between Jupiter and a Bottle. With the recent coverage, I couldn’t help but remember Michelle Gila. I went back and re-read the book and realized that you’d written an allegory about the club kids.

  —Is there a question in there? I asked.

  —I guess what I’m asking is, uhm, how much of that was based on original research? Do you really know Michael Alig, and if you do, do you know if he really killed Angel Melendez?

  Adeline perked up. I said a few words about Michael Alig. I said a few words about Angel. I rambled and ended on a joke, or at least something like a joke, because people laughed. It could have been from discomfort.

  I said thank you to the audience. People applauded.

  A handler escorted me to a table behind the dais. Adeline sat beside me. Jon was working late. Frances had Emil. Half of the audience stayed. Enough that I wanted to burst into tears.

  Most were nice, asking silly little questions. A few mentioned science fiction or Anne Frank or clubland, looking for a validation that I couldn’t deliver. I tried my hardest.

  After an hour, there were three people left.

  I wish I could say that I’d noticed him in the crowd, or in line, but I hadn’t. His was only another brunette face in a sea of white people congregating through their interest in literary fiction.

  —Do you remember me? he asked.

  —Should I?

  —Look close, he said.

  I recognized the smile, even through the years, even with the aging, even with the wrinkles.

  —Abe? I said.

  —That’s right, he said.

  We hadn’t spoken since the day that his mother coitus interrupted us. His dick had been in my mouth. Our lack of communication was no mean feat, considering the size of our high school and our Podunk little town. If nothing else, I should have thanked him for not exposing me, for not forcing me to leave in shame.