Never Too Late!

welcome wondering wanderers!

"KEEPING DISTANCE" song/video by St.Orr, K.Torres and E.P. Mortensen

https://youtu.be/mZqad3493AA

Gorgeous song by myself, K. Torres and EP Mortensen. Thank you talented men!

Feel free to comment, share, contact, etc.

blessings!

St.Orr

NYCMASSEUR.COM

BLUE SANCTUARY c. by Steven Orr (a 17 min audiobook short story of a dystopian view of a zombie plague ravaging New York--downtown.

https://youtu.be/Qmd1ndFNWwE

That Nefarious Dingleberry c. by Steven Orr

That Nefarious Dingleberry c. by Steven Orr

            Here I sit, surrounded by hundreds of varieties of birds. They are feeding, flying and freedazzling in all sorts of voices; making songs and generally creating a cacophony in multitudinous, avian tongues. 

            I was taking a week off. God knows I couldn't afford it but I had to get away. I was at the cape on the South Shore of Boston at a friend’s house in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Linda, my landlady, was a quirky, slightly overweight, alcoholic (but a functional one) who drove a school bus by day, kicked back with Chardonnay-soaked-TV-watching at night and on weekends attended church regularly along with once a week bible-study-classes. Here, I could savor a morsel of freedom, fresh air, and get away from the Golem's Gyre of New York City, where everything is dirty, loud, rich, poor, or simply untouchable. Here I could experience how I imagined life must be for the vestiges of my tribe, that formerly great, but now waning, white American Middle class. We were so powerful in the 50’s. And now so many of us poor were just a step away from falling through the cracks in the post-Millenial age of an American society bloated with the the 1% super rich 99% Dollar-store poor to Middle-class.

            I picture the god of New York to be a tall, skinny, grey, and extremely impatient, old curmudgeon with a hunchback. He is be-speckled, with a hooked nose, and constantly saying no to whatever is asked of him; or else ignoring everyone unless they wave money under his nose. I call him Golem, and he is my master. The gyre is that huge mass of plastic detritus that floats endlessly about the Pacific ocean and is as large as Texas. Put them together and you have a large playground, wasteland, i.e., the Golem’s Gyre, or my home, New York City. I have served my master here since my arrival in 1975. I put up with the constant anxiety, the rudeness, the abrasive mindlessness, and the awful noise (which gets worse every year) because it's still a pretty fantastic fucking place to find men and an even better place to find men massage clients. But for now, I am taking a respite and the birds are my only eye candy.

            The sounds of birds are a joy, the sun is hot silk on my skin, and I breathe fresh, sea air. I felt slightly dopey from it. For a little while, I can stop hating and fighting and start to feel normal, like after a good massage.

            Through the years, I’ve worked on thousands of male bodies and seen them come and go. Scott, one such client, was what I call a legacy client, which means he paid well and was very loyal. For the legacy client, you can do no wrong. He is the reason you are in business through all the good times and bad times. When he calls you, there is the sound of bells ringing, you are suddenly lifted up, and "Yes of course I'm free right now" is the unwavering refrain to his always-friendly question  "I was wondering if you were free this afternoon?" 

During the last few years, Scott had begun to study Bikram yoga, in order to counteract the tightness and rigidity of his aging body. He was always lean, tall and handsome with a full head of fine, ash blond hair that tended to flop over one eye and bounce when he was getting fucked. Though he wasn’t toned, his body improved soon after he began doing Bikram. He had a youthful face, which, except for a small pile of flesh forming under his chin, never betrayed his age. It was a WASPY face, both manly, and boyish. Scott swore he wasn’t gay but his behavior—especially when he was being a bottom—had a tendency to prove otherwise. I don’t question the “down-low” clients. They tend to all act overly macho in the public eye, and many are married or claim be to “bi-curious.” However many once they get behind closed doors instantly transform into big passive girls. Though the LBGTQ community is integrated into society more and more every year, the typical American male is still one conflicted homo sapien. “The river Denial runs deep and long” in our puritanical, American culture.

The first time I met Scott, I rendezvoused with him and a gorgeous, red-haired actress friend of mine named Angie. Angie had a wicked sense of humor and the capacity to be both wild and irreverent as a hooker one moment and as reserved as a nun or a librarian the next. All three of us met up at a Mexican restaurant in the West Village after Angie’s off-off-off B'way show. At the bar, Scott set himself up as host, procuring as many margaritas as we both could drink. Men who bought me drinks were always a huge turn on, for it implied they had power, deep pockets and I could give up control and be taken care of. And better yet, we all seemed to be flirting with each other! Here was my first bisexual experience since college. I was relishing it. 

We ended up in my apartment in the East Village. Angie's sensual hand caressed the banister of the staircase as we floated up the stairs. Our clothes seemed to remove themselves by magic. Within minutes, Scott was fucking Angie like a jack-hammer. I glued my body to his back and butt feeling every thrust and muscle as I hugged his chest to mine. My cock wedged into the crevice of his toned, perfect ass, first upward and then straight forward and down as if I was fucking Scot while he fucked Angie. Everyone came hard in one, loud sensual earthquake. I prayed we didn’t wake the uptight Jewess next door. 

I don't recall too much afterward, except thinking, there, I’ve done it. I’m bi! No small feat, after myriads of flaming bisexual fantasies and crushes during my years of college and throughout my acting and dancing career in New York throughout the 80’s and 90’s. Strangely I don’t recall much of any thoughts of my two playmates! The next day I remember having the image of a snake shedding his skin. My sloughed off snake skin was a metaphor for how delicious and delightful the experience was–a kind of sexual coming of age. For years afterward, that night would remain a novelty, though from that moment on, reflecting on being bi brought little more to mind that image of the snake shedding its skin, and little else in terms of the memories of love.

Anyway by that time I was doing massage for a living.  It was the early 90's. After that initial experience, Scott soon began to see me for massage regularly. I had no idea he was also seeing Angie! He would come on the average of at least once a month and was very generous. He contacted me one summer in Provincetown, where I worked as a houseboy for two seasons. He even came to see me in Amsterdam one summer when I’d swapped apartments with an older, uptight, but very seductive, Dutch, Jewish-American- Princess. I never asked Scott about his personal life. Although through the years, I gleaned he had married a female doctor, fell out of love with her, and divorced her.

The last time I saw Scott, he offered to take me out to a Thai restaurant in China town. While there, he revealed for the first time that he was the Father of two little girls. Then, after about fifteen minutes of hanging with him in public, the pleasure began to wane. His rigid personality could be oppressive; I'd had glimpses of it before, but now he seemed subtly disapproving and contemptuous of me. It occurred to me that possibly I was too gay for his comfort in public. Always a great fan of horror, at one point, when we were finished eating, I shared how entertained and fascinated I was to have seen the film "The Human Centipede" a week  before. “How can you watch something so deplorable and disgusting?" He laid into me. His bombastic response was almost a tirade. "What a sick, twisted movie–and anyone who likes something like that has to be just as sick and twisted!" Whoa I thought to myself. A little abuse anyone?

Thinking back now, I should have called Scott's attention to one particular experience we’d shared. It was a massage he’d booked, more than a year before. During this session, as was often our custom toward the climax, (when I wasn’t simply topping him) we were doing sixty-nine. As we were working each other’s bodies, I became super-aware that he wasn’t clean. Ew. One gets a sense of these things after so many years of being a body worker. In the next instant, I felt a particle of something stuck halfway between the back of my tongue and in my throat and it was larger than a hair. In a beat, without him noticing, I put my fingers down my throat and extracted the mysterious “thing.” I quickly looked to see it was a small clump of feces, obviously not mine. I quickly (and silently) flicked it away and continued licking, and sucking on Scott as if nothing had happened, albeit with a tad less gusto. Nothing like a piece of shit in one's mouth, to take the wind out of one's sails while “headin' round the mountain” toward that oft-hallowed “happy-ending” all the comedians make fun of in their monologues about massage.

Afterward, as he was reaching for the door to leave, I stood firm,  held the door closed and quickly shared with Scott the mystery of the nefarious “dingleberry” that had I had extracted from my throat. My narrative was more clinical than angry; all in all merely a factual relating of the events; ending with a request  "–And that's why Scott, I would really appreciate it if you would make sure you are clean when you come to me, and take a shower before the massage." It’s amazing how some of the most hideous things become commonplace when one sells oneself. Poverty breeds a kind of desperation and indifference all its own. The judgmental rich will always hold themselves in high disdain to the struggles of a poor whore. We are meat to be used and consumed; our humanity disappearing in ratio to how our cocks are worshiped in business dealings with M4M massage clients. 

"Oh, I'm so sorry bro–", his eyebrows went up, feigning concern. “Bro” was Scott’s ultimate term of endearment toward me. How I hated it. It reeked of his fake affection, but I dared not let on. "God” he continued, “I had no idea! I definitely will." Then I remember him saying something I never really understood. He paused, looked at me, and said, "You're a good man." It was as if he were addressing a dog, “Good boy.” We never mentioned the experience again. A few years later he disappeared from my radar.

When a friend of mine told me about her taking Bikram yoga, it triggered all these memories. With Scott there was such closeness and distance too. What was I to him anyway? A space to play in? A laundry bag? A closet? Or merely an object like a sex toy. More thing than human.

All these loops of images, spiraling around in my head like that large mass of plastic detritus, the size of Texas floating round and round in the Pacific going nowhere. What do I do with them? They play over and over in brain, never dissolving as plastic never dissolves. And so the memory of this gyre affair plays on.

Later that afternoon, a pack of fourteen wild turkeys, led by a huge Tom Turkey with a very red head, paraded like a herd of dinosaurs outside into the back yard of  the house. Linda and I watched them preen, and grandly scratch for food like feathered dinosaurs in the grass and under the bird feeders. Occasionally, the big old Tom Turkey would puff up and plump his feathers, showing off and looking twice his normal size. The alpha male. I tapped on the window. "Don't disturb them" Linda said.  "I'm not disturbing them” I said “I'm communicating with them."

MANDY MOZART LUCITE NIGHT c. 2016 by Steven Orr

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.

BELLEVUE c.2013 by St.Orr

BELLEVUE

c. 2020 by Steven Orr

Peter woke up early Sunday morning at 5:30 a.m., April 28, 2013. He heard a voice and it wasn’t God.

“Throw yourself in the East River. Go on, do it. You know it’s time. It’s time to kill yourself. Well, what are you waiting for? Throw yourself in the East River. Do it now.”

It was a cold dreary morning too, so it was a good day for it. He thought he needed to talk to someone, as he’d never heard this particular voice before. Almost sixty years old, he hated what he did for a living, which he referred to as turning tricks. He did massage with happy endings. Recently, he’d lost a rich, older “patron of the arts” who’d been offering him rent assistance the past few years. Now, he was three months behind in the rent. Various collection agencies had been calling relentlessly every day leaving nasty messages. Even his landlord, a former Vet, had begun threatening him. "I carry a gun and I'm not afraid to use if I have to, to force tenants out who don't pay--I'm just warning you." He made no bones about threatening Peter after the first 30 days without paying rent. This year had been one of the worst on record for massage clients, their numbers slowing to a trickle. His heart really wasn't into it anymore. He stopped advertising online; that spelled quick end to any gay male masseur's practice who wanted to keep seeing clients and making money.
Ever the creative one, he’d all but stopped directing Off-Off Broadway plays. Occasionally he still managed to pick up a pencil and sketch or draw. Now it was an effort to even get out of bed. Finally, he’d heard this voice, the voice telling him to kill himself. It really spooked him. He called the Suicide Hotline.

“I want to go to Bellevue. I need to talk to someone. I think I need to talk to a psychiatrist. I’m hearing this voice, it’s telling me to kill myself. But I’m afraid they might lock me up if I go there. If I go to Bellevue, will they lock me up if I just want to talk to someone?”

“No, they can’t keep you there against your will” said the operator from the Suicide Hotline.

As soon as Peter got to the Bellevue emergency room and asked to speak to a psychiatrist because he was hearing a voice in his head, they moved him up to the Psych unit on the second floor for observation. The nurses referred to this as Purgatory, for it was where they put patients before moving them up to Hell up on the tenth floor, a locked Psychiatric unit with beds, for longer, overnight stays.

In a small, dingy, dressing room, the nurse instructed him to take off his shoes, his belt, wallet and keys. They took his picture and put it on his very own ID bracelet that they affixed to his wrist. “It was the worst picture I’ve ever had taken of me” said Peter later. It was at this point when he discovered that he couldn’t leave Purgatory.

“You can leave as soon as you see the doctor,” said the Philipino nurse. Just wait a little while, see the doctor, then you can go.”

Meanwhile in Cannes, female whores were arriving in droves for the big film festival. Some girls got as much as $5K for an hour. “It’s really only like 5 minutes of being with somebody unpleasant if you think about it” one girl confessed unabashedly to a writer from The Hollywood Reporter.

Back at Bellevue, however, Peter was not a happy camper. “What are you doing?” he was yelling at the nurse as they took his things. “You mean I can’t leave? I want to leave. I don’t want to stay here! I was told I could leave at any time. I just wanted to talk to someone. I want to leave.”

There were lots of homeless men in purgatory. The entire unit smelled like dirty feet.

 In Cannes, meanwhile, many female whores were acclimating themselves on private yachts where they would be called upon to serve. Numerous parties took place on the yachts. The girls loved Arab clients the most, for they had so much money, they just threw it at you without even counting. A girl could make $30-40G in a week if she was a good.

Back in Purgatory, one of the patients, a homeless man, wrapped himself up in white sheets and wandered around, a kind of Lawrence of Arabia on acid.

Right next to Peter was an ancient beat up pay phone. This was the only mode of communication on the whole unit. As it turned out, he became a kind of temporary secretary, answering the phone and sometimes even taking messages for the patients. Even in Bellevue, his talent for co-dependency came shining through.

On his second day in Purgatory, a new patient joined the ward. He was a young, cute preppy looking white boy, early 20’s, a college kid by the looks of it. Peter assumed he was sane, because he was white and preppy and because he also seemed genuinely shocked too when they wouldn’t let him go. Like Peter, "John" only wanted to talk to someone. Peter and John commiserated on how unfair it was that they were both being kept prisoners. How dare they keep them here against his will. Peter had found a comrade. They were both agitated and pacing. “How dare they lock up sane people. This is outrageous—we’ve got to do something,” they protested to each other and to anyone who would listen.

John suddenly stopped. “I can get us out of here” he said to Peter, “I’m a doctor.” Uh-oh, thought Peter. “After all” said John, “it’s not over till it’s over. I mean really, you know. It’s not over till it’s over, it’s not over till it’s over…it’s not over till it’s over…” He kept repeating the phrase again and again, as if stuck in some bizarre Performance Art monologue. He definitely wasn’t as sane as Peter first thought.
There was the picture attached to the bulletproof plexiglas wall of the nurses’ station. It was a poster with the headline “Missing.” On the poster was the picture of a pretty, smiling young girl. The poster caught John's eye. “I know her,” John said, staring intensely at it. “I know her, and I can save her, I really can. Nurse, what’s this girl’s name, the one on the poster? I know her and I can find and save her.” He was tapping on the bulletproof Plexiglas now, getting more and more agitated.

Quietly in the corner a beautiful young black boy with glasses was sitting very still. Whenever the phone rang he would plaintively ask,  “Is that the doctor? Is that the doctor calling for me? I’m waiting for a bed upstairs. The doctor is supposed to be calling me so I can be moved upstairs.”

After about nine hours, Peter got to see a psychiatrist. After their talk, another nurse returned his belt, wallet, shoes and keys. He got to keep his ID bracelet with the horrible picture.

All this had happened three weeks ago, on a cold dreary Sunday, near the end of April. He was talking to his friend, Steve. “ I thought I’d told you about all this. Wow, I didn’t tell you? My sense of time is messed up. Three weeks already. I thought I'd told you.”

“I really liked the psychiatrist. Of course I’ll never see her again. She put me on three anti-depressants." "Which ones?" asked Steve. "Pacil, Laltuda and Wilbutrin" replied Peter. "I don't really get hard anymore." "Jesus, no wonder" said Steve. "But I do feel much better; I mean I’m not happy, but I can function. Things don't seem so hopeless. And I don't hear that voice anymore. Oh and I may be moving. This old Jew who draws at the Center on Saturdays, he’s also a gay historian. I’ve known him for years, since I’ve been booking the models there. We got to talking; he’s taken an interest in me. He wants to help me. I told him all about what happened. Last weekend, he took me out to dinner. He’s not rich but he owns a whole townhouse on Morton Street in the West Village. His family left it to him. He’s offered to rent me the entire first floor for a thousand a month. It would be private--he said he’d never go down there. I would have my own private entrance. Of course I’d have to be a whore there too and turn tricks, but it’s really ideal. I would have my own separate space. Well, there would be strange men coming in and out.  I would have to turn at least ten tricks a month to pay the rent. I hope he’s OK with that. Of course I’d have to tell him I'm a whore. He’s just getting to know me. Oh and I'd have to cool it on "the Jew" thing. He already came for a massage the other day. He even tipped me! And I didn’t even have to give him a Happy Ending. No, really, I didn’t.”