The mad thing is, I’m still glad I didn’t tell anyone. The whole ordeal was made easier by not having a slew of gays weeping over my wizened visage, and that’s assuming anyone would come to visit. I often fancy myself a homosexual pariah.
Upon my miraculous recovery, I thought of my guardian angels: the cast and crew of The Tenant, Dr. O, my friend Jeff, and the hospital demons. But most of all, I thought of Peg Bundy, whose voice whistled in my brain as I gleefully walked uptown on Second Avenue: “Al Bundy, this is all your fault. I should be up in heaven having sex with a young Elvis.”
WHY NOT?
Twink /’twiNGk/
noun
1. trademark
a small finger-shaped sponge cake with a white synthetic cream filling
2. informal • offensive
a gay or effeminate man, or a young man regarded as an object of homosexual desire
In June of 2009, my friends Prince, Chip, Teena, and I were a rambunctious gaggle of twinks in our early twenties with a mantra: “Why not?” We decided to take the cheapest flight possible to Portland, Oregon, to visit our friend Tony in his new digs. Tony—aka Teena, after his drag name, Nicoteena Patch—had recently moved to Portland to dance for Oregon Ballet Theatre, after Boston Ballet fired him and many of our other friends during 2008’s economic crisis. I had never been to the West Coast and was immediately struck by the stark contrast to East Coast American behavior. Everyone dressed as though they shopped at either a mall or an outdoor sports store. There were long-haired hippies in flip-flops, women with suntanned skin and bare midriffs, and dreadlocks in abundance. As I emerged from the plane into the Oregon summer sunlight, I happily let the parody of West Coast living play out before me.
When Teena’s then-boyfriend, Alexander, asked us to go to the outdoor marketplace, we employed our mantra, jovially replying, “Why not?” Alexander wouldn’t let us call him Alex. He was thin and bow-legged, wore gauzy rags, and had a rattail. We immediately hated him. He’d preach West Coast comedy at us like, “NO. Listen to me. Are you be? Do you ever just be?” I still don’t know what that was supposed to mean. We’d roll our cynical northeastern eyes and ask to turn up the music inside Teena’s boxy car, which we’d nicknamed “Toastine” because it looked like a toaster. We smoked a joint in the car as we pulled up to the marketplace blasting Lady Gaga’s “Boys Boys Boys.”
Stepping out of the car wearing our H&M finery, we were assaulted by a loud, gleeful din, colors and shapes of all sizes, and a multicultural bombardment of scents. Each street corner blasted a different song by Michael Jackson, who had just died. His death had gravitas. Just as I will forever remember where I was when Princess Diana died, the same goes for Michael Jackson. His HIStory was one of the first CDs I ever owned and made dances to in the privacy of my childhood bedroom. As we continue to inspect his life postmortem, to autopsy his choices and ambiguities, I feel a heaviness in my chest and a lump in my throat. When I listen to songs like “Man in the Mirror” or “Human Nature,” I smile-cry through them. I am incredulous and also incredibly aware of the magic. He and his music are beauty and terror and everything that it is to exist.
Toddlers, teens, adults, and the elderly danced in the streets, drinking out of red Solo cups filled with various tipples. The sun shone down as a fresh breeze ruffled the tulle skirts of the reveling gender rebels. Teena and I joined a dance circle and performed our best moves for a large crowd as “Beat It” screamed from a boom box. It was pure joy, a happiness that only friendship, sunshine, and good music can elicit.
The following day, we took Toastine up the coast to see the sights in Seattle. We were bopping around from tourist attraction to tourist attraction when some Washington-based dancers, Dylan and Chad, invited us to dinner and a Pride party. Dylan and Chad were married homosexuals. They were both incredibly attractive, as their names suggest. I had heard that they had an open relationship, which meant they could have sex with people other than their spouse. They were the first open couple I had ever (knowingly) met. I was fascinated and flirted with them shamelessly over dinner at the restaurant.
Dinner concluded and we made our way to the party. We drove Toastine there with the intention of going back to Portland that night, as we didn’t have a place to crash in Seattle or the funds to purchase a hotel room. The party was truly epic, as only parties in your early twenties can be. My flirtatiousness was working and it was clear to me that Dylan and Chad were interested in sleeping with me. As the party wore on and the drunkenness crescendoed, they asked me to leave with them.
I had just celebrated my one-year anniversary with Dan and we were in a monogamous relationship at the time. I warred with myself on what to do. My gift for denial kicked in and I obliged them, saying, “OK. But we can’t do anything.” Complete and utter nonsense. I found my friends to tell them. They were all sniffing after their own vittles. I bid them goodnight and told them I’d call them soon.
Dylan and Chad’s apartment seemed like the most luxe, posh place I’d ever seen. Chad was a well-known dancer and therefore I assumed him to be loaded. They made me a drink and brought me up to their bedroom, where they tried to kiss me.
“I can’t,” I said futilely. “I’m in a relationship.”
Nevertheless, they both got completely naked, and my eyes were assaulted by two of the largest, most overwhelming penises I had ever experienced. I removed my clothes and wedged myself between them in the bed. I was such a freak. I wouldn’t let them perform oral sex on me and I lay there guiltily as they greedily ran their hands all over my body. What I had intended to be a staunchly defiant rebuttal of advances turned into an incredibly sexy affair. It was an amazing game of cat and mouse in which they pushed me to submit to their exhilarating ministrations. We essentially just had an edgy wank together, then played Wii Tennis before I guiltily took a taxi back to meet my friends.
I felt very affected by the night’s occurrences and was torn as to whether I should tell Dan about it. In retrospect, the whole scene was rather innocuous, considering how our lives have shifted since then, from monogamous to open to separated. But at the time, I was shaken, hungover, and exhausted. I didn’t end up telling Dan about it until eleven years later. He just laughed and said, “Work.”
* * *
—
Early the next morning, I met up with my friends at a Stumptown Coffee shop to hear about their respective debaucheries. The morning-after summary was something I always looked forward to within our friend group. We always met at a diner or a coffee shop after a night out to exchange stories and tales of licentiousness. Prince had ended up meeting a handsome Cuban gentleman and hooking up with him in the back of his car. He nicknamed him “Cuban Sausage” and says that to this day, he had the biggest penis he’d ever seen. Teena and Chip had had a threesome during which Teena left, effectively passing off the dick as though it were a baton in a relay race.
We groggily drove Toastine back down the coast to Portland and passed out at Teena’s until the next morning, when we decided it was time for a trip to the gay nude beach. We pulled up blasting Gaga’s “Summerboy” out of Toastine’s rolled-down windows. Music has the power to incite and instigate certain behaviors, which I like very much. “Bikini tops, coming oh, oh, off!” Gaga mewled, and Teena had barely exited the car when he pulled off his Speedo.
We set up our towels on a rocky stretch by the water. Old men gazed lasciviously at the twinks spreading out performatively on their Disney towels. Bears jostled each other, spilling their Budweisers and flirtatiously tweaking each other’s nipples. Lesbians spread tanning oil on their lovers and friends. Music wafted on the breeze, blowing in from various devices and boats on the water. The sun danced a jig with feathery clouds, making the blue sky seem impossibly deep.
Teena saw a beautiful boat on the water and said, “Let’s swim out to that boat.” There was a gentleman standing at the wheel and drinking a beer. “H
e looks kinda cute,” Teena said. We stood up, completely nude, and sauntered down to the edge of the water. Our feet lazily lapped by the waves and our dicks to the wind, we waved frantically to the man in the boat. He perked up and waved us out. Smirking at each other, we ran into the water like adorable naked little kids, our penises thrashing to and fro.
We arrived at the boat’s ladder out of breath and cold from the early summer water. Our rescuer handed us each a plush, fluffy towel, which we wrapped cozily around our skinny frames, and offered us beers. He introduced himself as Steve as he took long pulls from a Marlboro Red and sipped a Pabst Blue Ribbon. He was of medium height and build, with a sunburned nose and the tan lines and eye wrinkles of a farmer. His impossibly blue eyes were beautiful but also betrayed hints of crazy. As I always say, “The crazy lies within the eyes.” His nails were dirty and he looked as rough as they come. He wore long navy-blue board shorts with no shirt, showing off a slight paunch and a bare chest that had a small patch of hair at the center. Steve appeared to be in his early forties, which to a twenty-one-year old looked ancient. He vaguely resembled the quarterback Tom Brady, if Tom Brady were a potato farmer and a lush.
Prince, Chip, and I took turns taking photos of each other in splits and high kicks. Teena was up at the captain’s seat getting a driving lesson from Steve. From where we were sitting at the bow, we could vaguely see Teena flirting with Steve. Then we saw Steve kneel in front of Teena to perform oral sex, a Marlboro Red still clutched in his left hand as his right reached around to grab an ass cheek. Teena seemed to be enjoying himself until he suddenly yelped, “Ow! My dick! YOU BURNED MY DICK!” He skittered down to the bow of the boat and told us, “Shit. He burned my dick.”
The sun was setting and Uncle Steve, as we’d started calling our boat daddy, asked if we’d want to go to his beach house the following day. “It’s quite a drive and you’d have to pick up the keys from my forest home first,” he warned us. But when presented with an invitation, it was our civic duty to reply, “Why not?” We gave him our information, thanked him for a fun day, and headed back to shore.
Inside Toastine, we wondered what exactly we were getting ourselves into. Why not? Why not? Why not? Apprehension thus effectively ignored, we continued on our merry way, laughing at our fortune and screaming along to “Money Honey.”
The following morning, as we piled our weekend bags and our cute twink butts into Toastine for a little beach house retreat to Uncle Steve’s, we began to realize how strange what we were doing was. We didn’t know this guy. He could be a murderer, for all we knew. It would be like any horror film. The unwitting, imbecile twinks mince directly into the patiently waiting open maw of a monster while the viewer shouts, “WHAT THE FUCK! NO! GET OUT OF THERE!”
“Shit. We’re gonna get killed, but I hope I get fucked first!” Teena said.
We printed out directions from MapQuest, a hilarious site from the pre-GPS era. I remember shuffling the pages about, trying to discern which went where. We wove in and out of trees, traversing lush glens and marveling at the sun-dappled splendor of Oregon’s natural beauty. I had never seen such exquisite forests. I felt as though I had entered a beloved Hayao Miyazaki film and was to be greeted by wood nymphs and water sprites. But instead we were driving toward Uncle Steve, the dick burner from Portland.
Finally we arrived at the dirt-road driveway for Uncle Steve’s forest home. At the end of the drive stood a majestic wooden structure with beautiful windows. The house looked like a hybrid of a 1950s cathedral and a Fire Island Pines masterpiece. It was completely wooden, and enormous oak trees swayed alongside it. There were various metal sculptures on the grounds and rolling, green-canopied hills. We were gobsmacked by the beauty. Teena whispered in awe, “Shit. Let’s get murdered.”
Uncle Steve gleefully burst from the front door and shouted, “Welcome!”
Prince said, “Is that a butthole?” There was an enormous iron sculpture flanking the flagstones leading toward the front door. It stood nine feet tall on a pole and was approximately nine square feet of folded and worked iron, with all its folds originating from a central anus.
“Yes, that’s our famous anus sculpture.”
“Oh my fucking god, it’s a big butthole!” Teena screamed in delight, and cackled as Chip posed for a photo with it as if he were posing with Michelle Obama, with whom he is obsessed. His pride was that visible. Chip has a way of smiling like he’s never been so happy as at that exact moment, but then he smiles the same way a bit later and you wonder if he’s ever not happy. Chip’s laughter is like the laughter of a toddler. It’s impossible to suppress a smile. The way he smiled next to that monolithic poop chute outweighs the Mona Lisa, in my mind.
Uncle Steve brought us into the house and introduced us to his friend, who was so dry and bland he could best be described as hay. The house looked as though it was under construction and had the distinct aura of a homosexual crack house. I am almost certain it was a place of either drug production or porn production. Nevertheless, we were amazed by its sheer size. Rich people were still like unicorns to me at that point in my life. I have since realized that 99 percent of the 1 percent are insufferable.
We were led through the house and greeted in each of the many rooms by homoerotic art—sculptures, paintings, drawings, and artifacts of myriad shapes and sizes, each depicting strange and beautiful gay scenes. I had met only a few older gay people by this point in my life, but it seemed that all their homes represented how thankful they were to be homosexual. Each room shone with a pride that bludgeoned you. At the time, I found it a touch overwrought, but as I age, it makes more and more sense. When enough people tell you that you shouldn’t exist, it makes you want to scream, “FUCK YOU, I EXIST!” And the older the gay man, the more volcanic his fury.
Uncle Steve and the man made out of hay wanted to show us the pride of their home, The Observatory, so we walked up a floating wooden staircase to a small room shaped like a turret. It was completely windowed, creating a dome of glass with a beautiful view of the robin’s-egg sky resting lazily on a bushy green canopy. The glamour of looking up was not mirrored by looking down, however. On the floor lay a bare full mattress, a box fan, an old tube television, and a stack of gay porn DVDs.
I don’t know what they expected us to do, but we sure didn’t do it. Instead, Teena said, “It’s a dick observatory! Prince, take my picture.” Prince always carried a small digital camera with him—it was before the time of smartphone cameras—and he obliged as Teena jumped on the crack den observatory mattress, posing in his too-big sunglasses and his fauxhawk hairstyle.
Uncle Steve and Hay then sent us out to play in the backyard, which was a sprawling field resplendent with wildflowers. Like young Alices, we lay down in the flowers and wished we could talk to them for hours. As we were fondled by a gentle breeze, a pale waxing-gibbous moon looked down on us and whispered, “Bottoms.”
Upon our return to the house, Uncle Steve asked if we wanted to see his cock. Then, with a lascivious wink, he said, “My chicken,” and presented us with his pet chicken, Marissa. I silently barfed into my hands and then ate it back up to rid myself of the evidence.
The sun was skirting the horizon as we were handed the keys to the beach house and given directions. We thanked Uncle Steve and Hay profusely for their generosity and then got into Toastine and began our long trek to the coast of Oregon.
When we finally arrived at the beach house, bouncing along rocky beach roads to “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich,” the light had been completely replaced by extreme, black night. Oregon’s nature continued to astound me. We unloaded our things from Toastine and entered the house, which was on a small jetty and seemed to be suspended over the ocean itself—a wooden island in a raging, spiteful sea. Turning on a light, we were once again gobsmacked by our twinkly good fortune. The floor was covered by a lush 1960s carpet, and the floor-to-ceiling windows were framed by wood-paneled walls and large,
heavy beams. There were happy houseplants and large, overstuffed settees. The beach house was not ostentatious in its richness. It was concise, cozy, and perched atop the misty waves.
After exploring the house and selecting our rooms, we took blankets outside and spread out under the stars. Zero light pollution affected this remote corner of the earth. We laughed and marveled at the visible swirl of the galaxy above us, and talked about existentialism and metaphysics like twenty-somethings. Freezing and exceedingly grateful to have not yet been murdered, we went back inside and headed to bed.
The following morning, Teena came into the living room and said, “Shit. Uncle Steve texted me. He said he’s coming up to the beach house.” Now we were sure our disembowelment was imminent. We thought we were going to have the place to ourselves, and having Uncle Steve there would surely change the dynamic. He arrived shortly thereafter and the whole place took on a sinister mien. Each dark corner of the house became a black hole. The waves smashing against the rocks became a death march. Uncle Steve drank copiously and followed us around the house. We were waiting for the moment when he’d snap and gut us for pie ingredients.
Luckily, we had a distraction. A few days earlier, at the nude beach, Teena had run into a benefactor of the arts. His name was Jean and he was a very handsome older gentleman. This man was definitely someone I’d be happy to meet now. He had invited us to join him at his vineyard the upcoming weekend, and we obliged. The next day, we would bounce from one outrageous situation to the next.
The other twinks and I had recently learned about the Radical Faeries, a countercultural movement seeking to evaporate the commercialization of queer culture. To thank Jean for his generosity, we decided that our visit to the vineyard should climax in a performance as Radical Faeries. We mixed various songs together and choreographed an elaborate dance in the 1960s kitchen of Uncle Steve’s beach house while he watched, a martini in hand and a cigarette dangling from his sunburned lips. We thought if we ignored him, he might go away. What we didn’t think about was that he was probably just making sure the idiot twinks he had invited to his beautiful home didn’t burn the joint down. When we went to our rooms that night, we locked our doors for fear of Uncle Steve’s murderous advances . . . which we had invented. We set our alarms for the crack of dawn, because we were convinced that if we stayed any longer, we’d end up outlined in chalk.
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