A journey back to NYC in the 90's
The
evening began with Mandy, the fat, old, terrier mix that kept slyly slinking
around the bed looking to lap at the oil that glistened on our bodies as the
session unrolled to its anticlimactic, hard-yellow-cum-climax. Midway through
the night there was a bar full of beautiful boys encased in thick slabs of
Lucite, followed by a parade of souls taking off from the roaring runway of the
black jeweled and garbage lit boulevard of Broadway, circa 2 a.m. on a hot
August night. Closure came with a homeless man’s serenade underneath the
Lincoln Center Mozart banners waving in the wind as he waved his change cup,
his mouth covered with something brown. I sat outside a clip joint called The
Saloon directly across from the jewel box of Lincoln Center. The waiter was
entertaining and funny, his head shaved except for a tiny tuft atop his crown
that made him look like a newborn black babe. “You’re not from Switzerland are
you?” He asked. “If I get one more tourist tonight! They’re so cheap.” He
brought me a second glass of wine. “It’s on me,” he said.
I watched the world pass. A cavalcade of Black Sabbath fans,
tourisistas, bag ladies, sequined dolls wearing Jersey dos and more homeless
wielding paper cups. Next to me sat a typical “New York tribe” talking deals, deals, deals. A fat woman
waddles by. Here comes a hot Italian male with a voluptuous ass. He sees the
need in my eyes and brushes away from it, smirking.
An hour before this, in a high-rise complex called Schwab, as
in Q-tip, Mandy, a client’s dog, with one white eye and one brown eye, had been
sulking and nosing around the bed upon which lay my client, Bill, his legs
spread far part, buck naked, oohing and ahhing his way through the session. The sounds echoed in my mine. Dick talk, dick talk, dick talk. Right before the session began, Bill said “Do I get a refund if I’m
not satisfied with the service?”
“No” I said with a smirk, “All sales are final, no refund and no
return.”
I didn’t like Bill. He was an old, anal-retentive twerp, a gypsy-chorus
boy gone grey and paunchy. His tasteless early American bedroom décor made me
writhe with nausea; Mandy, however, was the topper. She had a throaty bark like
a staccato car alarm and refused to shut-up no matter how many times Bill
warned her with his girlish pleas of “Oh Mandy shush” over and over. But on and
on she barked like a schizophrenic on amphetamines, right up to and beyond the
moment of truth, when Bill and I settled business. “Business before pleasure” I
chimed, my mug now beaming with a toothy grin, for receiving money always made
me smile.
Where I sat now, writing of oil slicks and business dicks was
the exact same spot I had sat years before with my date, a pretty girl named
Elizabeth, on another August evening, worlds away from here. She was my lover of
two months. We’d met in ballet class taught by Richard Thomas on the Upper
Westside early one evening and fucked the same night. Elizabeth, who was
half-Jewish, loved to dress up in her Long Island Mother’s hand-me-downs.
Anything would look good on her with that Claudette Colbert face framed by
honey-blond ringlets. That night, I recall she had on a classic 50’s sleeveless,
brown circle dress with white polka dots, that billowed out from her slim,
taunt waist. Her Mother’s tan stilettos were making it impossible for her to
walk and after searching endless blocks for something to do on our date we decided to
rest at this outdoor cafe, drink wine and discuss art and music, our favorite
topics. We were still on the honeymoon then, before she began threatening me
about giving up men; before her confessions about being a runaway teenage call
girl, complete with black pimp, specializing in lesbian scenes for rich
clientele at The Plaza. It was also before her pussy started to feel like it was
hiding a dull knife that hurt like hell whenever I fucked her. To this day I
think it was her I.U.D. and that she had inserted it too close to the entrance
of her vagina to get back at me for being bi. I don’t recall noticing a Mozart
banner back then, but I’m sure there was one.
“Ooww, ahh” the dick talk went on and on. I was over Bill,
under Bill, feeling hot, feeling cock, feeling like a man, a whore, a slut, one
who serves, one who is serviced, feeling pain-- “Ouch!” I yelled. Bill stabbed
my cockhead with a sharp fingernail as he ground away on top of me. A few
seconds later--in a stupor of passion, or indifference, he did it again! “Hey
watch it with that nail!” I yelled. “Mm” said Bill, eyes closed, lost in the
moment. Mandy meanwhile, had her eye on the bottle of smoky, cheap, Indian
coconut oil I was using to lube up Bill’s man pussy. A few moments later, while he
was on his back, I silently and stealthily threw Mandy a left hook, managing to
graze her little, foxlike head with my knuckle; she recoiled and in the next
second I tried to bitch slap her, all the keeping my body rigidly still so as not to
disturb Bill. Mandy jerked back and dodged the blow, then she seemed to stop
and just stare at me. It was as if she were grinning; muzzle half-open, lips
quivering, snarling back to reveal sharp, stinking, yellow, canine teeth.
Was this real? Was this annoying mutt really some sort of
malevolent spirit? A demon? Bill’s familiar? Was Bill actually a Satanist,
posing as a horny, old pansy? What if this whole thing was a set up? And I was
actually some kind weird sacrifice or offering? Christ, no one even knew I was
here! Any moment now, Bill would turn his head toward me, and I would freeze,
powerless, just staring into his eyes. They would be amber and glowing with the
tiniest thread of red running horizontally through the middle of each one,
pupils fine as slits. “Fuck that fantasy” I said to myself silently, “session’s
almost done!” Back to work. Dick talk, dick talk, dick talk. After a nauseating
eternity, Bill’s soundtrack built up and reached a climax; or really a kind
of anti-climax. Bill got up quickly and stumbled into the bathroom where he
came in the sink. He probably didn’t want to muss his sheets. I studied his cum
as I washed my hands. It was very dark, almost orange-brown. Not a good sign.
“Goodnight Bill and goodnight Mandy” I said, smiling as I left, closing the
door. I was free. Mandy’s piercing, schizoid, bark echoed down the hall,
muffled but higher in pitch now, as I entered the elevator. The sound was
lingering in my ears like the fluttering of bat wings; painful, like the
haunting, far away echo of a siren or the whispered screams of a baby. I
covered my ears with my hands as the elevator doors paused open. They stayed
open, and they stayed. Moments passed as I pressed my hands and harder over my
ears. I could still hear the fucking dog, barking, barking. Finally I jumped in
just as the doors closed. I went down alone.
Later, I found myself standing against a wall feeling guilty
and ugly and old at a bar called “The Works.” I lingered five or six feet from
the entrance, invisibly as patron after patron trounced daintily on my feet,
their eyes on auto-ignore as they passed. The giant screen on a wall to my left
was showing scenes from the Olympics. Beautiful black female athletes galloped
like deer and handsome white hunks flew, twisted, pumped, pummeled,
jack-knifed, high-jumped, won and lost in a series of montages before thousands
of excited, cheering, fanatical spectators. Here I stood, invisible in a fag
bar, trying to guard my feet from the vicious, uncaring steps of strange,
younger men. Was this my destiny? A middle-aged sex masseur who dreams of
putting himself through Rolfing school? Or maybe this is hell, payback for
knuckling Mandy when all she really wanted to do was lick the bottle containing
the smoky, cheap, coconut oil, or lick any oily skin available, and quite
possibly, even her master’s own shitty boy pussy during the hundred dollar
session?
Suddenly the screen caught my eye as the image of a large
container of liquid Lucite poured out like Star Trek laser beams forming the
words “BY DUPONT.” We were all standing in cases of Lucite; living coffins
formed by ego and society; frozen beauty needing protection from ourselves,
from the Mandy’s, the hundred dollar bills, the thousands of cheering, jeering,
fanatical spectators. “Don’t cry, baby. Don’t cry” I said, blowing a kiss to a
giant, black woman crying her loser’s Lucite tears; then blowing another to all
the boys who didn’t see me enter and wouldn’t bat an eyelash as I left.
A Latino with nice tetas and plucked eyebrows is watching me
go. He would look so much better if he’d let his eyebrows grow. Should I start
a conversation with him? I mean, he does look interested…dick talk, dick talk,
dick talk. Now I’m walking out of the Lucite bar, onto the Lucite street, pass
the Lucite town-house where the Lucite, bi-racial, beatific, corporate lawyer
lives with the gorgeous, ultra moderne, bi-level, sunken living room and the
in-fucking-credible-10-inches-if-it-was-a-foot-long-dick. He paid me for a
hard-working, two hour session; finishing with a mutually explosive happy
ending. The only truly gross part was his unexpectedly phony-sounding
exclamations of “Oh my goodness” when he came. I almost laughed out loud. That
was a week after (or before, I forget, there were so, so many) this Mandy thing
which seems not real and oh too real.
Back at the outdoor café, I"m watching the runway strip,
here comes Lady Diana, in all her black, trashy, he-she, lean, angular and
finely chiseled elegance. She’s roaming or hoin’ down the street like it was
the street of no return or the last catwalk, street-walk of her life. Weary
drama Miss Thang, all 6’ 10” of you with your street cha-cha heels clickin’, as
tall and black as a tree in a fairy tale forest night, flicking your cigarette,
carrying your bags and rags and not caring that your three-day-growth of whiskers
doesn’t match your dark brown rag-tag cut out of a monk’s robe-dress of
transsexual, post-op, pre-op street
saint-gone-bad-and-old-and-young-an-cold-bliss; clicking your Sleeping Beauty
crack high heels. Click, click, click in the night as you flick, flick, flick
your ashes away, you lovely, lost Miss Diana Thang. Oh Miss Thang take me with
you, take me with you for I am your ashes falling, flick, flick flick. In the
opposite direction, walks Black Sabbath moron, bald spot shining through his
died-with-shoe-polish flat, black mullet. He’s carrying a rosary, talking to
himself; he’s saving New York and killing fags in his dreams, then mounting
Madonna in his prayers but she’s got a cock between her legs and spits in his
face as he tries to fuck, fuck, fuck her. The cock turns into a knife and zooms
up and inside his belly, releasing thousands of crab-flower creatures, running
out and over him, fast, and hungry like immigrants running to the borders of
Los Estados Unidos, then dying like fly flowers reborn and seeding like pigeon
maggots under the streets; under the window ledges and hot, sticky tenement
fire escapes where big, black flies are born and homeboy cats hunt and
squirrels do nose dives through their safety nets flying down, down through a
thousand weed tree whisps of dirty, plastic bag shreds. (Singing) “We’re All
Connected!” Yeah, you and me and the drug dealer just outside who sells crack
and coke. He’s a new kid on the block. He appears one day out of nowhere and
you hate him. You complain to the police, to the neighbors, to your God and
Higher Power of the Sweet Violet world and destiny and redemption for
protection from all the drug dealers. You pray for them to all go away. “Please
God, make them go away, make them go away…”
Because my brother’s doing time in an Illinois prison for selling
drugs and he got 12 years on a first offense. Good God what IS this country
coming to? Oh, that’s right, it was an election year, they had to make an
example of someone! But now he writes me from Juliet State Pen that his
“Colored girlfriend who can’t ever get enuf when the rainbow is gone” is on the
stuff and living at the local hick-farm-town YMCA with her 3-year-old and I cry
because I just know that three-year-old is receiving the worst of it. The worst
of hundreds of years of abuse and slavery and hate. That tiny mocha child who
should be singing of green lakes and blue skies and butterflies when the
rainbow is enuf, has already heard the word “nigger” from her own Daddy, the
same as I heard the words faggot, fruit and three-dollar-bill from my own Daddy
and it scared me to death and made me hate myself. When will we ever learn? It
hurt me and the hurt never ever goes away. Go away, go away, make them all go
away…
Then one night it’s raining and your apartment’s leaking and
you go out for a beer and ice cream and coming back you see the drug dealer.
He’s on your front stoop, taking shelter from the rain. He’s selling, with a
friend and you realize he too is trying to get by or get over a system that’s
kicked him out on his ass just as it has you. And then, you love him. You want
to embrace him, say something funny, welcome him to your turf, your home, the
place where you whore. “Hey” you want to say “Come on in man! There’s always
room for one more. Maybe some of my clients would like a little leche before we
play. What did you say, man? Let’s make a deal.” But then you realize you don’t
do drugs anymore, just sex and that’s only limited to those who pay and you’re
white and he’s brown and he’s straight (well, he’s Latin so maybe…) so you just
say; “Hey, how you doin’?” “Okay” he answers “shitty night. It’s supposed to
rain all day tomorrow too.” “Oh yeah” I answer “ that sucks. Kinda nice though,
it washes all the shit away.” Not meaning him or me, but everybody else and all
the other lowlifes who live off prey or each other, doin’ their own particular
duty that they do so well on this mad, mad island called MAAAAN---hattan…
“Yeah, you’re right” he says, and smiles. And you see he’s young and Latino and
hot with that long scar on this cheek melting into his smile as the ozone
orange streetlights glow softly in his eyes and there’s just a shadow of
sparkle and you could so fall in love with him.
Maybe we are looking for the same thing. A way out? An
escape? Some peace? A fuck? Money? An island somewhere in the sun, way off and
far away from this one…
Back in the outdoor café on B’way I’m tired, the voice is
slowing, the magic fading to fatigue as across the street, the Mozart banner is
waving over Lincoln Center, demarcating where the walls of money and elegance
and culture too pure and Republican and money-driven to save or care about the
three-year-olds living with their Mothers-on-crack somewhere in Anytown,
U.S.A.; too hard to care about the Miss Diana Thangs wandering through the
night with their bags and their cut-out brown monk robe-dresses…their cracked
Sleeping Beauty High Heels and their 3-day 12 o’clock shadows that haven’t seen
a home other than a doorway or a cardboard box over a warm air vent in years.
Oh sweet, sweet city life. And under the Mozart banner,
blowing in the wind, a homeless monster lingers looking like he’s impaled on a
parking sign. He’s eating something brown from his change cup as he toasts an
insane moon and laughs and curses at invisible street demons passing him by.
Mozart isn’t playing, in the windy city night. The “New York tribe” continues in
New York-eeze, talking retirement now. The waiter yawns. I have to piss like a
motherfucker. Let’s go home, purple pen, the night lives on and nobody will
remember but you. The night is gone, like the gnat I just squished with a
finger on the black marble sticky table. Goodnight Mandy, Mozart, Lucite,
night. Nite, love you, see you in the morning.
