BLOODBATH

by James St. James

  So it was in the beginning, but it soon became obvious that the stakes were much higher this time: it was an unspoken battle for the control of the room.

  Back and forth it went, until all other conversations trailed off and everybody tuned in to this classic episode of The Michael & James Show.

  We were neck and neck for hours, taking vicious potshots at each other, searing insults, blistering personal attacks …

  He told everybody about my unruly shoulder hair. I countered with the story of how his butt fell inside out and he and Keoki had to push it back in with a pencil.

  He talked about the time I chatted with DIANNE BRILL for twenty minutes with a giant snot bubble hanging from my nose.

  “That’s nothing compared to your little poop problem at Club USA.”

  “They have all sorts of wonderful acid peels now, James, that could get rid of that awful hamburger face of yours, honey, and then you wouldn’t have to be embarrassed to be seen in the daylight.”

  And so on.

  I could have held on. But just then, Bella, who still resented the fact that I wasn’t spending any time with her and Whitney anymore, walked in and linked arms with Michael. He had an ally. I was doomed. Humiliated. They brought out pictures of my old tube skirt-and-fez phase. They giggled over my floating eye and body odor. They speculated on my impending spinsterhood, and worried about my palsy. I don’t even remember the big finish, something to do with my wobbly eyeliner and lipstick on my teeth. I retreated to a corner in shame.

  Michael won.

  He showed he could not only keep up, but excel in this new milieu. He consumed massive quantities of drugs, the first time I’d ever seen him do so much and actually enjoy it. I felt sick to my stomach. I knew it was only a matter of time until he was Master of the Game.

  I had lost serious ground. Michael had his foothold in Mavis and Freeze.

  It can be rather disheartening to be best friends with a rattlesnake.

  It’s the little moments that are so telling:

  Michael and I had been admiring each other in the mirror for about an hour.

  Suddenly he turned to me and screamed: “OH! OH! I have always wanted to do this!”

  He grabbed an electric razor and waved it menacingly in my direction.

  “Skrinkle?” Pause. “Darling?” Pause, eyes narrowed. “Do you trust me?”

  “No, not one iota.”

  “You don’t trust me to give you the most FABULOUS hairdo of all time?”

  “No, Michael, I do not trust you on a boat, I do not trust you on a goat. I do not trust you here. I do not trust you there. I do not trust you anywhere.”

  He was undeterred.

  “My dear, you are going to look JUST GER-JIS! GRRRR-JIS,” and, without warning, he rammed the razor upside my head.

  “OW!”

  “SHAVE AND A HAIRCUT—SKROD LOD!” He laughed and hit me again at another angle, taking off a very large hunk of head with it.

  Interesting.

  “The AIDS look!” he announced.

  “Chemo Glam!”

  “A few bruises here, some yellow around the eyes …”

  “Flesh-Eating Bacteria!”

  “Nicole Brown Simpson!”

  “You look fabulous!”

  I looked horrific.

  He appraised my new look, then kept at it—hacking at me here, leaving a bloody gash there, right upside the old medulla oblongata-la-da-doo. Little hopeful sprouts stuck out at one side, and there was a sickly patch of fur left tufted on top.

  “Oh, you look fabulous!” he said, without even looking. He had returned to admire his own thick mane. He smiled as he languorously combed his lush, unspoiled locks.

  I can be such a Clampett sometimes.

  I put on my dress, took off my shoes, and decided to go barefoot.

  I was hardcore—RAR! What a look!

  Of course, by the end of the night, my feet were the bloody carrier stumps of various staphylococcal infections from standing in the knee-high goo found in improvised bathroom stalls and walking on shards of glass on the dance floor …

  Fake scabs on my face, real ones on my head and feet… Where did reality stop and image begin?

  My sick new Sick Look was surprisingly real.

  I scratched a scab on my head, and an ear fell off.

  And then we were off. Twelve of us freaks piled into a limousine, on our way to one of those newfangled “raves” you’ve no doubt been hearing about. A rave is when thousands of blissed-out teenagers gather together in unsupervised, and often illegal, surroundings, like a field or an empty warehouse. Then they dance the night away to that heathen techno music, and celebrate the glory of peace, love, and baggy pants. This particular rave was being held at a high school in Poughkeepsie.

  Let me just say: I don’t believe Poughkeepsie was prepared.

  It was still a two-hour drive, though. And that’s a long time to be trapped in a car with Michael, Mavis, and Freeze.

  “You know I’ve always thought that we should open a theme restaurant,” Michael said, “and call it Café Auschwitz. Make it a big gray building with iron bars and barbed wire.”

  Everybody laughed.

  “And only one course on the menu—water,” added Freeze.

  “Maybe a few finger sandwiches,” I offered. “With real fingers!”

  Mavis raised her hand excitedly: “Oh, and waif supermodels in deconstructed clothes fighting over lettuce leaves, looking emaciated and gorgeous!”

  “And you could stamp numbers on customers’ wrists when they come in.”

  “We could have really hot skinhead busboys in Nazi uniforms!”

  “Oh My God! Let’s do an ad for it in Project X. Get it to me by tomorrow morning.”

  And we were there.

  We tumbled out of the car in what I thought was rather grand fashion—a cyber-clown fantasy—and rolled toward the entrance.

  The doorman, a truly awful person nicknamed Peter-Peter Boyfriend Stealer, who just scant hours earlier had been one of my best friends, took one look at the group of us CLUB KIDS, and me in particular, and ran heading for the hills. He leapfrogged over the crowd, knocking over poor, dear, sweet Lady Miss Kier in his haste to dissociate himself from freaks like us. Whatever corner we turned, he vaulted over bars, disappearing into impenetrable areas of the school…

  That’s how embarrassing we were. Club kids were becoming passé.

  My acid kicked in around then, and I got a little sad and paranoid.

  I looked for a friendly face to reassure me. I saw Marlon, Keoki’s new boyfriend, and hoped for the best. “Hey, Marlon!” I yelled and made a lunge for him.

  “Nobody here likes you, James,” he said, and ran the other direction.

  Would you ever say something like that to someone on acid?

  Well, thank goodness there were no great cliffs in Poughkeepsie, or I would have thrown myself off of one. And, fortunately for me, I suppose, Mavis and Freeze had just sold their last cyanide capsule.

  I looked around for Michael, but he was rolling around on the floor with a new boy.

  Daniel.

  A sixteen-year-old boy named Daniel.

  “Oh, James,” he gushed when he surfaced. “This is the one. He really understands me. He’s one of us!”

  Daniel was wearing a leash and collar and Michael was walking him through the party on all fours. The boy was just adorable.

  But as they were busy sucking face, I felt like a third wheel.

  Next on my list of hopefuls was Mavis. But where was she?

  She was having the time of her life when last I saw her—oh—and there she was now.

  Mavis at a rave, well, that was a sight! “Ravin’ Mav!” we called her, scootin’ around the dance floor, like she had good sense.

  The kids all did a double take when they saw her—“Granny at the Rave”—but she was surprisingly adept at picking up the lingo and sizing up the scene.

  She’d flap her bony little arms
like a chicken and blow her little jeweled whistle—nobody partied as hard as Mavis did! She would dance for days if we let her.

  It was frustrating for me as her Spiritual Guide to just let her go. She was hopeless on her own; meeting all the wrong people, wasting her time on the dance floor. She should be in the back, schmoozing Lady Miss Kier, for God’s sake—there was work to be done!

  But look at her.

  She’s so happy. I bet this is the happiest she’s ever been. Ever. In her whole life. I’m probably the best thing that’s ever happened to her. Kier can wait. I noticed her edging into the shadows whenever I walked into the room. She probably had a zit or something and was embarrassed to see me.

  But I was still all alone.

  Gosh, it felt just awful to be unpopular!

  I felt so awkward. What should I do with my hands? Should I sit, should I stand and dance in one place, keep moving?

  I certainly didn’t want to give off any “loser vibes,” so I kept waving to nonexistent friends on the dance floor and mouthing Be right there! in the direction of the bar.

  But then I heard:

  “Girl? What are you doing?” and Freeze caught me. “There’s nobody out there! Who were you waving at?”

  “Oh, that isn’t Michael? That looks just like Michael!” and I pointed to—quick, find someone—a fat black girl in the corner.

  Whew! That was close!

  “Girl, you need to slow down. As a friend, I’m just telling you. People are talking.”

  Again with that! Would you EVER say that to someone on acid? Some friends! Freeze’s cruel streak was surfacing again. Better to just scream and run away sensibly than start a scene.

  So Freeze, Marlon, and Peter were all against me. Michael found a new boy, we would not see him again for weeks. Mavis was useless and Lady Miss Kier had a zit and was hiding from me.

  This was without a doubt the lowest, saddest moment of my life. Friendless in Poughkeepsie. Dancing alone on bloody stumps.

  At least I looked amazing. I’ll give me that much.

  Whoops. There goes my other ear. Did I just lose my other ear? Well, at least searching the ground for a lost ear was a viable solution to standing there looking like a doofus.

  This new boy of Michael’s, Daniel, was soon a welcome addition to our little family. Delightfully subversive, willfully self-destructive, but with a pair of puppy dog eyes that you could happily fall into forever, he really was quite a charmer. Michael was sold on him by the end of the rave, when he started to cry at the thought of leaving Michael’s side. He ran away into the city quite often to visit.

  I’m all misty just thinking about it now.

  I’ll be honest.

  I loved Daniel like I loved all of Michael’s boys: silently and with self-loathing.

  I watched them together and wondered why I was always watching him, him. Them.

  So I sat on the sidelines, as usual, and refused to take part in their snugglebunny games. They smoked crack and jerked off for hours on end, while Jenny, Mavis, and I had tedious conversations in the next room. Waiting, always waiting.

  Michael would emerge periodically, huffing and puffing and red in the face and blue in the penis.

  “He’s the one, James.” And later …

  “He really understands me.”

  It was a projection, of course. Michael needed to believe that someone could understand him, that there was someone else like him somewhere in the world, when it was obvious to me and all that he existed alone on a completely different plane than the rest of us.

  Daniel wasn’t “the one.” He drifted out of our lives in due course, and was replaced by the next “one”—Bryan or Jeremy or Peter—I can’t remember.

  But they were beautiful, they were all beautiful.

  Big ears and harelips … skinny puppy boys with soft eyes and … authentic acne!

  Little boys.

  He ate them alive.

  I dreamed of those little faces that would fit in the palms of our hands … quick breaths, in and out…

  A kiss, awkward and unsure.

  Blushing

  Dizzy

  Flushed with emotion

  Trace each rib. Count each hair.

  Afterward, watching them—their energy! Their earnestness! The way they attacked everything … They were boys, real boys.

  I remember one boy, in particular. This is true:

  Twelve years old—a runaway … and who could turn away from a face like that?

  Skin so smooth. And beet-red cheeks.

  Why, he didn’t look real. A little porcelain doll.

  So Michael dressed him in drag.

  “He looks just like Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby.” And he did.

  A sexy little baby.

  And the boy just loved it.

  They would go to drag hustler bars and pick up old men for money. It was consensual I tell you—the boy loved it and got off on it.

  “Go make Daddy some money.” And off he went.

  But it was funny and sweet and all so innocent. The boy had his moment and when it was over, he went back home.

  And what is wrong with that?

  And they came to him, they really did.

  Nice job, if you can get it, right?

  Still I loved them all. Silently, but with the knowledge that they weren’t forever boys, that they would be gone and replaced again and again and I would never have a part of them. Once Michael had marked them, they were ruined for life. I could never have them and I would never know that feeling of being “the one,” and being understood.

  That was for Michael to feel and for me to watch.

  But back to the general misery and humiliation that I was enduring with Mavis and Freeze … They had to move—the robbery, the landlord, no radiator … so they found their own little corner of hell—an ugly apartment on Eleventh Street. I hated it from the moment I saw it.

  Its feng shui was all off: the ceilings were too high, and, yes I’m aware that is usually an enviable condition in New York City apartments. Here though, it just looked wrong. The room itself was long and narrow and it gave you the unsettling effect of living in somebody’s hallway.

  There were three bedrooms—each one smaller than the last—three doors lined up on the southern wall. One was a very large, spacious boudoir with a sunlit living area and a loft space for sleeping, one was your standard-size windowless New York bedroom, and the last was a hobbit’s broom closet.

  Mavis took the football field, OF COURSE (power-mad dyke that she revealed herself to be), and Freeze was relegated to the Japanese prison hot box.

  The middle room was for rent.

  Was this power positioning?

  Did this arrangement cause any tension?

  You bet it did. There were internal power struggles daily: they were both just too out of their minds to communicate them.

  Freeze was a cracked-out basehead by this time; he didn’t really mind the room itself… the smaller, the darker, the filthier—well, the happier he was. He could sit in the dark and paint Day-Glo happy faces on the walls to his heart’s content.

  And Mavis was now a full-fledged speed freak, so nothing made her happier than pogo-dancing, UP AND DOWN, UP AND DOWN, for days at a time. She also found fulfillment in the construction of elaborate obstacle courses for her to run around.

  Argh.

  They were nasty sons-of-bitches, the whole lot of them. And there was a whole lot of them—people I didn’t know or care to know.

  For some reason it began to bother them that they were giving me hundreds of dollars worth of free drugs every night. They acted as if I were doing something new, and it upset them. About the fourth or fifth time of the night when I asked for yet another gram, their lips would purse, their eyes would narrow into little slits, and it would take them A LONG TIME TO GET AROUND TO HANDING IT OVER.

  I would have to jump up and down like a monkey, and poke them and prod them and remind them how fabulous I looked that night,
and just generally JUMP THROUGH HOOPS.

  It wasn’t fair at all. It was just damn rude, if you ask me.

  Then, one morning, in the middle of a fabulous after-hours soirée, I asked for a teeny tiny little bottle.

  And Freeze said:

  “No.”

  Hm? What? I didn’t quite catch that. And neither did you. WHAT WAS IT HE SAID AGAIN?

  “No.”

  The room stopped.

  And that “snap, splat, gurgle” sound you just heard? Well, “snap” was my heart breaking, “splat” must have been my ego being squashed, and that “gurgle” sound could only be the life-force draining from my body—Yes: “snap, splat, gurgle,” all at once.

  That was when the Black Hole of Calcutta opened up and swallowed me. Good thing, too, because I would hate to have had to sit there, politely, and act like I wasn’t humiliated. It would have been awful to have to make up some silly excuse as to why I was rushing out of the room, sobbing hysterically, throwing on a pair of tennis shoes, and going home.

  Yea, I would have hated to go through that, boy.

  How cruel. How rude. I mean, really, if you already owe five grand, what’s another twenty dollars among friends. But they absolutely humiliated me in front of some very celebrated junkies, and I was furious.

  Oh, now is probably a good time to tell you about a little problem I have with shoes.

  I know this will seem like a long and pointless digression. (OK, I know it seems like yet another long and pointless digression.)

  But when I was just a wee lad, a suckling babe in my sweet mother’s arms (yes, we’re going back that far) I was pigeon-toed. Exceptionally so. Comically so. I was forced into wearing special shoes that had an iron bar that connected my feet together.

  I’m told I hated them. That’s understandable, right? What child wouldn’t?

  I would bang them against the bars of my crib, all night long, and scare the bejezus out of my mother, who thought we were being burgled.

  I’m going somewhere with this. I promise.

  To this day, I don’t like shoes. I hate shopping for them. I hate wearing them. It’s a throwback to those torturous days and nights when I was shackled like the baby Hannibal Lecter.