Destination Unknown, page 14
“That’s the one with the gourds, right? Harvest or something?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, and when you sit on the gourd, the payos come out, and then you pull on the payos, and the wheel on the slot machine spins, and if three bells come up it goes ‘ding, ding, ding’ and you win fifty dollars.”
She laughed. “I think you got it.”
Meanwhile, CJ got busy at work and I got busy with exams, and suddenly I wasn’t seeing him that much. But we were having epic phone conversations nightly, ones that were often punctuated by my mother’s tight-necked “Chatting with your boyfriend again?” She could not seem to understand that two gay boys could be friends, and while she and my dad were okay with him staying with us for the holiday, she had staked her flag on us never being in a room together with a closed door.
“It would be the same if it were Deena and you were heterosexual,” she said, not meeting my eyes, and I nodded, pretending to forget that Deena and I had been in my room with the door closed probably hundreds of times.
After our God’s Love We Deliver day, the conversations with CJ had shifted. I hadn’t gone back—school, after all—but he kept me updated on Juan and Anita; Brian had died a week after we’d seen him. Now, after days in school in which AIDS didn’t seem to even exist, it was front and center.
“I think I’m going crazy,” I said to him one Thursday night as we began the second hour of our nightly talk.
“Short drive,” CJ said.
“ ‘Digging Your Scene’ by The Blow Monkeys—that’s a song about AIDS, right? Like clearly?”
“Oh God, yes.”
“ ‘I know I’ll die …’ ” I sang.
“Yep.”
“This jock, Tony Calabrese. He would literally kill you if you looked at him and he thought you were a fag. He’s walking down the hallway singing that song.”
“Welcome to Planet Gay. They steal our culture. Same with what the straights did with the Village People. You know ‘YMCA’ is about hooking up at the gym, right?”
I kind of knew that.
“They play that shit at Yankee Stadium every seventh inning. That’s what they do. They steal our stuff, they make it their own by stripping out the true meaning, and they don’t give a flying fuck if we die.”
“I’m beginning to think that’s true,” I said.
“You’re beginning to wake up to the truth. AIDS is what they’ve always wanted. You hear that guy Pat Buchanan? He wrote an essay about how the homosexual declared war on nature and now nature is getting its revenge. He works for Reagan now. Watch. Someday he’ll be their king, and we’ll be in prison camps.”
I shut my eyes and shook my head, hard. My parents had always been liberal, but politics hadn’t ever meant that much to me. All of a sudden, it meant everything, and I didn’t even know where to put my feelings about it. They were so big.
“By the way, it’s tertiary syphilis,” CJ said, waking me from my angry haze.
“What is?”
“AIDS. Tertiary syphilis. That’s what the Native says.”
The Native was New York City’s gay newspaper, and CJ was an avid reader. He said it was basically the only place you got coverage on AIDS. Or, according to their publisher, “so-called AIDS.” They’d been digging into things a bit, and now every week there was a new conspiracy theory.
“He says it’s basically untreated syphilis.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“Yeah, I think he’s lost it. Last month it was swine flu. Now it’s syphilis. Next month, who knows? Runner’s knee.”
“Untreated scurvy,” I said, and he laughed.
“A side effect of being chased by Frank Perdue,” he said.
“Undoubtedly,” I said.
The answers to Why did the chicken cross the road? had become part of our banter. To get to the other side. Because Frank Perdue was chasing him. To keep his pants up, which I guess was the answer to Why does a fireman wear red suspenders? These became the interchangeable responses to any question to which neither CJ nor I had a correct answer.
“Why is it that our president refuses to spend the money to find a cure for this disease?” CJ asked.
“To keep his pants up,” I answered.
“And Nancy Reagan. She goes on Diff’rent Strokes, interrupts a perfectly good episode in which Willis is about to get high for the first time, and encourages us all to ‘Just say no.’ Just say no. Like that’s going to make the drug epidemic disappear. Why even do that?”
“Because Frank Perdue was chasing her?”
“Probably. He’s probably behind this whole ‘Just say no’ movement. It’s like a drugs-for-chicken trade-off he’s trying to popularize. Get all the people who smoke crack to switch to Chicken McNuggets and make a killing.”
“Maybe Ronald McDonald was chasing Nancy Reagan?” I added.
“Maybe he was,” he said. “That’s probably it.”
“We’ve solved the world’s problems, yet again. Why are we so damned brilliant?”
“To get to the other side. Did I tell you about Matt?”
There had been a lot of “did I tell you” stories.
“I have no idea.”
“He’s the one, we met at Les Hommes earlier this year and we took a walk, and he was so, so nice. Like he really cared about me, like he asked questions and we didn’t just talk about sex. And he was young! I mean, for me. Like, twenty-six.”
“Almost a baby,” I deadpanned.
“Exactly. Well, anyway, we walked to Riverside Park and we stopped on Riverside Drive at this angel statue on Eighty-First. We were talking about the plague and I don’t know what made me say it, but I said, ‘If this thing ends, how about we meet here. Like the next day?’ And he hugged me right there on the street and said we would. That was in the spring. I’m just … I’m tired of waiting, is all.”
I didn’t say anything, because I got it. I hadn’t been waiting as long as CJ, but it seemed so long already. When would I get to experience life without AIDS looming over everything?
He changed the subject. “How’s the incorrectly named Napoleon?”
I groaned and took a sip of juice from the cup I left on my nightstand. “He literally won’t take no for an answer. He came over last Sunday again. I told him no, but he was like, ‘I’m coming over,’ and even then I said, ‘We’re not going in the bedroom. This is not a thing that’s going to happen again.’ And we wound up there. He knows how to get me in a moment of weakness.”
“Was it fun?”
More than anything, I wanted CJ to feel jealous. It was totally maddening that he didn’t.
“It was okay.”
“Just okay?
“Just okay, okay?”
“Okay!” CJ said. “God. Some people are so unwilling to kiss and tell.”
I got off the phone a little after nine, and when I went out to the kitchen for a glass of juice, my father stopped me.
“Got a minute?” he asked.
“Sure.”
We sat down at the kitchen counter and I put my feet up against the side of the refrigerator, which always bugged my mom when I did it.
“I just … how’s it going, Micah?”
“It’s going okay. Why?”
“I mean this gay thing. I worry about you. I know from Rick that it can be hard to be gay, and I just don’t want you to struggle.”
I stared at a photo of my grandfather holding me as a baby. The side of the fridge was covered in stuff like that. I looked happy. He looked happy. Would we look as happy now if he were still alive and he knew?
“I haven’t told anyone, and I don’t think I will. At school or anything.”
“I think that’s probably a good idea.”
“Yeah.”
We sat quietly for a while. I was thinking about my father saying it was probably good not to tell people. Because maybe he was right, but basically that was my father telling me to be dishonest. I thought about what CJ had said about people wanting us to die, and I wondered what my father would say if I told him that. We were tiptoeing around each other, making sure not to say anything that might rock the boat. And that made me think about what CJ had said, about how one way or another, telling my parents would change the relationship forever, and I wanted to go back. Back to before conversations with both of my parents got so damn awkward.
He broke the silence. “Do you think—”
“What?”
“I don’t know. If I had played more sports with you?”
I laughed. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Well, I know, but. I mean, Rick plays a pretty good game of racquetball, but, like, team sports. If we had thrown around a football sometimes.”
“Dad. That’s not it. CJ plays catch with his stepdad all the time, and he’s almost too gay. Don’t think there’s a correlation there.”
My dad nodded absentmindedly, like his fears weren’t really quelled by my words but he wasn’t going to push it.
* * *
That Friday night, CJ took me to my first gay bar.
The Works was on Columbus Avenue at Eighty-First Street. The sign was a water faucet, and the front was entirely black glass, so you couldn’t see inside. I’d always wondered, every time I took the crosstown bus and passed it, what it would be like inside. I imagined it would be more modern and cleaner than Badlands.
I clutched my fake ID as we walked inside, and found I was right. Way more modern. No bouncer stopped us, and we walked the narrow floor opposite the mirrored bar, which was adorned with neon-blue lighting. Above the bar were huge video screens, playing the video for “Head to Toe” by Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam. The floor below thumped with the beat. We brushed past a tall, pudgy, middle-aged guy with a mustache, who smiled at us.
“Well, hellooo, Peter Pan,” he said. My shoulders clenched.
Toward the back, a few guys were playing pool, but most of the men kept their eyes on the video screens on the upper walls.
“Total Stand and Model,” CJ whispered to me, and I grinned self-consciously.
Across from us stood an older guy with freckles wearing an honest-to-goodness raspberry beret, like the Prince song. CJ pointed and said to me, “Look, it’s the kind you find in a secondhand store.” I smiled. The guy became animated, seeing that we were talking about him and deciding, incorrectly, that this was a good thing. I looked away, not wanting to hurt his feelings.
“Drinks on me,” CJ said. “No wine coolers.”
“Finally, you and Deena agree on something. Well, that and my jacket.” I pulled on it, as of course I was wearing it again. “A beer?”
“How manly,” CJ deadpanned. “You got it.”
He went back to the bar and I kept my eyes on the videos, scared to death some old guy was going to come over and talk to me. What would I say? The year before, the drinking age had been raised from nineteen to twenty-one. I wasn’t even close to being old enough to be there, and I was afraid someone would catch on and have us kicked out. Or at least me.
I couldn’t imagine CJ got kicked out of anywhere, ever.
He returned with my beer, a Rolling Rock, and we clinked bottle heads. The bitter liquid curled my tongue as I swigged it. Man, did beer suck. Give me a strawberry wine cooler any day, I thought. But I knew not to say it to CJ.
“Basically, you just gotta look bored.”
“I’m thinking that’s gonna be kinda easy.”
“Just look bored and wait and see what you catch,” CJ said into my ear, over the thundering base of “Some Like It Hot” by Power Station.
“I’m guessing herpes,” I responded, and that made CJ laugh, which was always good.
The man in the raspberry beret tapped CJ on the shoulder.
“You are soooo cute,” he said, and even though I had less-than-zero interest in him, a puff of jealousy spread across my rib cage.
“Thanks,” CJ said. “Just out of prison.”
The guy laughed like this was the funniest thing ever and leaned in toward CJ. I couldn’t help but lean in, too, not wanting to miss anything over the loud music.
“You should know: I’m anally oriented,” the man said.
CJ took this information in, seemingly impressed. “Well, that’s great. You must keep a very clean apartment.”
This did the trick. We were left alone, and CJ sighed dramatically.
“Have you ever wanted to live somewhere where there are actual young people?” he asked over the blaring music, something by Eurythmics. In the video, Annie Lennox wore a blond wig.
“What do you mean? We’re young people.”
“Yeah, no,” he said. “We’re young adults. As kids, we got teddy bears from Pottery Barn. We eat Tofutti instead of ice cream. We schtup adults because that’s all there is. I mean, like, let’s go where there’s a Dairy Queen and a mall. Manhattan is too expensive for people with kids. It’s just the very rich kids, who hang out Friday nights smoking pot outside on the steps of the Met, and the very poor kids, who hang out in Times Square or on the piers. The rest of us don’t exist, Micah. We’re figments of others’ imaginations.”
I didn’t answer, because CJ was obviously just rambling. When he realized I wasn’t answering, he started a roiling game of Who’s been to prison and for what? and we found ourselves laughing so hard that I teared up. Then the DJ came down from his cage and gave CJ a warm embrace and kissed him on the cheek, and soon CJ was holding court with a circle of men, regaling us with stories of trips to Spain he’d certainly never taken, and wealthy lovers he’d probably never had, and annoyances with his stepfather that were almost certainly true. Everyone wanted him, and the jealousy I’d felt earlier faded because who could blame them? Drinks kept arriving, and I kept taking them, and soon the place was spinning, and it felt so out-of-body. Unlike at the Tunnel, I didn’t want to be home watching MTV. I wanted to be right here, right now.
And maybe the guys weren’t all over me, but did I want them to be? There wasn’t a man in that bar within five years of me, and most of them were at least a decade older. CJ left with several new phone numbers and the hearts of at least two admirers in his pocket. And I realized, when we left, that I hadn’t looked at another man the entire night. Not like I was interested, anyway. My eyes had stayed on CJ.
* * *
I got home around one in the morning, and I expected my parents to be asleep. I was wrong.
“Let me smell your breath,” my mother said. She had placed a rocking chair in the foyer, facing the door, and now she stood up and came at me, leading with her nose.
I hadn’t planned for this.
“Are you drunk?” she asked, frowning. Her nose confirmed for her that indeed I had booze on my breath.
“Not really?” I said unconvincingly. My mother’s frown lines grew to epic proportions.
“Micah,” she said. “I don’t even know who you are anymore. Grounded. For a long time.”
Grounding included the loss of my telephone, and the next day I couldn’t even convince my mom to let me call CJ so he’d know I was alive and grounded. I slammed my door to voice my disagreement with this policy, and I put on Spring Session M as loud as I could, until our upstairs neighbors started to thump on their floor. After I turned it down, I sat there on my bed seething, my head and heart pounding, feeling utterly changed and misunderstood and maybe even a little bit proud.
I think my mom knew this wasn’t the time to mess with me, and all I could do was wait until it was time for work.
“You’d better be back right after the second show, you hear? I can’t monitor you, but if you’re not back, there will be repercussions beyond anything you’ve seen. You have your backpack?”
I nodded, tight-lipped. She’d strongly suggested I study during the break between shows. I took the elevator down to the basement rather than the first floor, and I dropped my knapsack in the super’s office and asked if I could grab it tomorrow, because you know what? Screw that.
Grounding was for people who gave a crap.
December 1987
Felicia listened patiently while I breathlessly told her about my night—all of it. Her expression didn’t change when I shifted from the Works to the ramifications with my mom. Even when I told her about leaving my bookbag in the super’s office and that I hoped it would be okay if I missed the second show, her face remained passive. Walter stopped in with the cash box from concessions; it looked like he’d lost another ten pounds, and he was walking stooped over. He kissed her on the cheek and said he was heading home, and she said, “Okay, baby.” As he left, I winced, wishing I wasn’t bothering her with what suddenly seemed fairly unimportant.
“This is what makes you unique,” she said finally.
“What?”
“You’re knee-deep in your first-ever rebellious phase, and you tell your boss you’re going to play hooky. Go. Have fun. Be safe.”
* * *
The box office at the Gaiety was empty aside from a bored-looking woman who barely raised an eyebrow when I slapped my money down. I felt like an adult in a glorious way, painlessly, dangerously free, and I wondered who I could be if I just let go.
I paused before going in. “Are you hiring dancers?” I asked.
She crooked her head to the side and looked me up and down.
“Wrong type,” she said in a thick Russian accent.
I cataloged that interchange as something to discuss in therapy when I was an adult looking back on my childhood, and I entered the club.
A skinny, dark-skinned guy with a sideburn-free mullet gyrated to something I couldn’t recognize and didn’t like. The theater area was about as crowded as last time, and I felt the rush of excitement that came from possibility. I could do whatever I wanted, within reason. If I wanted to play around, I could, because I was free. Scanning the middle-aged crowd, I quite quickly disabused myself of that notion.
Older guys. AIDS. No thanks.
CJ was the third dancer to come on, and I moved down to the front row for his set. His face lit up when he saw me, and he gave a goofy smile before swallowing it and going back to the persona of a macho guy dancing to “The Glamorous Life” by Sheila E. He writhed his lanky body and he shook his skinny butt, and I sat there, trying to ignore how turned on I felt, and totally transfixed by how amazing CJ was, how he just fit into every situation, including some incredibly weird ones. I wondered what it was like to be the center of attention, as I’d always lurked around the sidelines. Of course I wasn’t the right type to become a dancer. How did a guy become worthy of that sort of attention, and did I even want it?
