Seventh Avenue South

by Duncan MacLeod

  ✽✽✽

  Things got weird toward the end of the summer. I couldn’t sleep because my thoughts were racing. Gia came home a month early, so I was back to sharing the bed I had paid for. School was approaching, and I needed to calm down. I had never felt like this before. I was making good money as a janitor, but I wouldn’t be able to keep the job once school started.

  The thing was, I had paid $900.00 for a room for the summer. I didn’t pay $900.00 to share the bed with a dominatrix for the summer. Once she was home, I couldn’t stay up late watching Ben Casey on TV. We went to bed on her schedule. The flip side of that is that you couldn’t find a room in Manhattan for $300.00 a month in 1986. Rents had skyrocketed. Claudius moved to Brooklyn (we ran into each other at a Celtic Frost concert that Gia dragged me to). He said that Brooklyn was starting to get cool because artists were forced off the island. I went to visit him the following week. He was not well. I had missed his birthday by one day. His roommate, Beth Death, baked 12 hits of acid into his birthday cake and didn’t tell him. He was still tripping when I got there. We went for a walk, and when a feral dog attacked us, he lost it.

  “You’re so lucky you escaped! Resurrection Records is hell, Ethan, hell!” He sobbed into his black-fingernailed, silver-ringed hands. “If you have a chance to get out of New York, take it.”

  Oddly enough, I got a phone call from Clarabelle, an old classmate at Concord. She lived out in East Hampton and was having a late summer clam bake; did I want to come?

  When I told Gia about it, she got excited. “I’ve never been to East Hampton. Can I come?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  So, we caught the commuter train that took two hours to arrive in East Hampton. Once we were there, it was a two mile walk to Clarabelle’s place on the beach. Gia searched frantically for a taxi to wave down, but there were none.

  “How much more walking will there be? I could have walked to the Bronx by now.” Most of Gia’s frames of reference were Manhattan-centric. She grew up there; never knew anything different until she flew to Los Angeles.

  As she told it, “I stayed with my friend in Beverly Hills. The blocks were like a quarter mile long. I asked if they had any yoo-hoo in the house and they didn’t, so they sent me to the corner store. But it was miles and miles of houses until I saw a gas station. They don’t have yoo-hoo at Exxon.”

  So, this walk in East Hampton was causing panic, because she knew every step she took away from the train station would be a step in the reverse when it was time to leave.

  We got to the house on the beach. The smell of smoking seaweed made my mouth water. We went to the table where they were dishing out the plates. Gia turned to me.

  “I’m allergic to shellfish.”

  “Why on earth would you go to a clambake if you’re allergic to clams?”

  “I didn’t know. I thought there was steak and potatoes too.”

  “They have corn on the cob.”

  “If it was near the shellfish, I might suffocate if I eat it.”

  There was a huge vat of baked beans that had been cooked inside on the stove. That and the homemade biscuits were the only things Gia could eat. Once she had her plate, she looked around bewildered.

  “What do you need?”

  “A chair.”

  “You can sit on a tuffet of grass.”

  “I’m not Miss Muffet!”

  I took her plate of beans and placed it safely in the sand. She was terrified but I helped lower her onto a tuft of grass growing out of the sand dune. Once situated, she ate the beans and biscuits. I could see she wasn’t happy. I chowed down on lobster and quahogs and beans and biscuits with corn on the cob. It was delicious. I wished Gia could enjoy it.

  After supper, I helped get Gia to her feet. She wasn’t a big fan of sand. We called a taxi so Gia wouldn’t have to walk to the station, then caught the train back to Manhattan. She stared at me with angry eyes.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Why would you take me to something like that?”

  “You insisted,” I reasoned.

  “You should have just told me ‘no’.”

  “I should have told Mistress Gia Genocide, the dominatrix, ‘no’?”

  “Good point.” She giggled. I giggled. It was contagious. We both laughed most of the way home, drawing stares from our fellow passengers.

  ✽✽✽

  One night after work, I came home, and Donnie was there with Gia. I hadn’t seen him for a while. We hugged.

  “Ethan! Don’t you want to come with us to Danceteria? It’s ‘Straight to Hell Night’.

  I had heard of this legendary gay night. I didn’t know it still went on.

  “Are you going too, Gia?”

  “My friend’s band is playing the first floor. Are you coming?”

  “Sure, let’s go.”

  “We’re waiting for my friend Mika. She’s driving from Jersey.”

  I changed out of my janitor clothes into the zebra fur pants, multicolor platform shoes, and a black Alien Sex Fiend t-shirt. Donnie convinced me to add a black and tan suede fringe vest, and I let him wear the American Flag suede. The black platforms I bought were too big, so I gave them to Donnie permanently.

  The bell rang and Donnie clomped down the steps to let in his friend Mika. She was a bit wobbly.

  “I gotta use the can.” She disappeared into the tiny bathroom and locked the door.

  Gia asked, “Oh my god, Donnie. What’s wrong with her?”

  Donnie admitted, “She’s on hits.”

  “What’s hits?”

  “It’s Codeine and Dorden. It gets you really fucked up.”

  “Are we ready?” Mika came out of the bathroom wobbly as ever. She had stop sign red hair and a knitted top hat. Her jean jacket was painted with anarchy symbols, punk’s not dead and DK, the Dead Kennedys logo.

  “Who’s driving?” I asked.

  “That’d be me.” Mika held up the car keys like a trophy just awarded at a soccer match for “Most Fucked Up Player.”

  Our silence spoke volumes.

  “I just drove here from Jersey! I’m fine.”

  Downstairs, her car was parked on the sidewalk, blocking the entrance to John’s Brick Oven Pizza. Gia put her head down. “Oh shit.”

  “What?”

  “I have to see John every day. I can’t let him know this has anything to do with me.”

  “Too late,” Donnie said.

  John had managed to climb out of the store over the hood of the car and glared at Gia.

  Mika showed impressive leadership and improvisation skills.

  “Make way. We have an injured woman.”

  Gia leaned on me and Donnie for support as we drag-walked her to the car. John’s expression changed.

  “Gia, honey, are you okay?”

  “I got a busted knee.” It was true. She had it wrapped under her floor length skirt.

  “And tell your friend to park in my spot next time.” He pointed to a red zone near Seventh Avenue South. “I painted it red myself.”

  Mika said, “thank you, mister! And I’m sorry.” He waved his hand in a gesture of pure New York ‘who cares’?

  Jimmy and I pushed Gia into the front seat and hopped in back. Mika fired up the car, and screeched off the sidewalk, making a U-turn in the process. Gia held onto the “oh-shit” bar for life. Bleecker was eastbound and we were going west.

  Mika smiled at us in the rear-view mirror as she turned a hard right up Seventh Avenue South. There was no northbound traffic. This was because the street is one-way southbound. Mika made a left turn across all lanes of oncoming traffic onto Christopher Street, clipping a fire hydrant then coming to an abrupt stop in a small traffic jam.

  “It’s raining!” Mika said. Indeed, it looked like rain, but it was city water from the hydrant shooting thirty feet into the air on a hot summer’s day. Like ants, children poured out of apartments and played in the cool rain that Mika created.

  I tried my d
oor handle, but it was jacked, serial killer style.

  “Gia, open your door, I want out.”

  “I want out too, but I can’t get my hair wet.”

  The light on Hudson changed, and Mika made another hard right headed for Chelsea. A limousine stopped in front of a fancy apartment building. It was in Mika’s way. She swung into the next lane to avoid rear ending it. Luckily, the car that was in the way reacted and let Mika in. Then the limousine door opened.

  “Hold on!” Mika said, putting a maternal arm across Gia’s bosom. We rammed the limousine door right off its hinges.

  “We’re going to fucking die,” Gia moaned. Please stop.

  Donnie spoke up. “We’re almost there.”

  We made it across 14th Street without incident. There were sirens blaring in the distance. We were too far up the street to see anything but flashing lights. None were headed our way.

  “I got this,” Mika said with the steely confidence of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando. She made a legal right turn on 18th, nearly made an illegal right turn onto Seventh but we all screamed, then she coasted up 6th to 21st Street, dropping us in front of the club.

  “Wait for me. I gotta find parking.”

  She drove to a bus stop, used the curb to gain access to the sidewalk, and left it tucked neatly against a chain link fence surrounding an empty lot. She tottered across the street, had a cliché’ altercation with a driver who nearly hit her after she punched the hood of his car, and then joined us smiling.

  Gia said, “I nearly died because I didn’t have cab fare. Poverty kills.”

  Haoui let us in as a group, but insisted on my ID. I gave him a lousy fake Massachusetts ID that I’d bought up in Times Square.

  “Alright, you’re good, kid. Have fun, boys!” He winked.

  Mika and Mika hugged us goodbye. Donnie and I made our way up to the fourth floor, which had an improvised little stage set up. It wasn’t even midnight, we were early. We made quite a sensation in our platform shoes. Donnie was already over six feet tall, and then with the hair, you could add another six or seven inches. The platforms exaggerated his height beyond compare. He leaned down to talk to Anita Sarko, the DJ.

  “Donnie, you are so fucking tall.”

  “Thank you. Don’t you like it?”

  “Yeah, yeah I do.”

  We wandered on. Donnie said, “Don’t look now, it’s Jack Hump.”

  Jack Hump was a high powered celebutante, who was extremely famous in Manhattan and nowhere else except maybe Berlin. He wore his hair in a bizarre hybrid of Rockabilly and Blitz Kid. That was how I knew where he was. It was like a beacon. But I saw nothing. A subdued blond man walked sullenly up to us.

  “Hey kids, what’s shaking?”

  It was Jack Hump. His hair was naked. He wore no products of any kind.

  I asked, “Where’s your hair?”

  He blinked rapidly. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I see you coming because of your hairdo. You’ve gone from fluffy to flat tonight.”

  Donnie cracked up. Jack Hump took my innocent query as an insult, but he was a celebutante, and he had manners. He threw shade.

  “I wear it like this so I can go home with sexy boys instead of people like you.” He walked away.

  I frowned and stuck out my tongue at Jack’s back. Jack lifted a finger and waved it without turning around.

  I fretted about it, but Donnie set me straight.

  “He’s not normally like that. He’s really a sweet guy; it doesn’t matter.”

  “But I see him out a lot.”

  The music changed. Anita Sarko had taken the cassette out of the player and spun up her turntables. It was Funkytown by Lipps Inc.

  Donnie turned to me. “Don’t you love this song?”

  I nodded.

  “Come on!” He grabbed my hand and pushed me up on top of a very large speaker. He clambered up after me. With the platforms, Donnie almost touched the ceiling. We danced to the trancey song from my younger days in Vallejo, before I escaped to the East Coast. Our impromptu go-go dance had momentum. The dance floor, covered in folding chairs for the show, filled with dancers. It was mainly men. This was the gayest night at Danceteria.

  “Straight To Hell,” or S.T.H. was a chapbook published out of New York. Its tagline was “The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts.” It was filled with naked boys doing naked things together. There were back issues on sale, but they were ten dollars!

  When Funkytown ended, we browsed the “literature table”, acting like either of us had ten dollars in our pocket. I was socking away a lot of money in the bank, but I was afraid to touch it, like it could cause my money bubble to burst and the cash would just leak out of my account.

  The truth was, I had a twenty-dollar bill in my wallet. I needed it for the cab home because I was never getting Mika’s car again.

  Anita changed to atmospheric music, and the dancing dyed down. Donnie and I got seats in the second row, pretty far stage left. The lights went down, and the host, Trey, introduced the evening’s show.

  It was basically a stripper, a drag performance on accordion by Ethel Eichelberger, two more strippers, and a wrestling match.

  The first stripper was honey-colored, with a big round butt which he shook at the rich guys. They came forward and tucked bills into his butt crack, copping a feel along the way. I had never seen a stripper, male or female, so I was learning a lot all at once. It was sensory overload - I got a boner.

  Behind me, someone kept hitting my back. I turned around, and it was this short man with curly hair and coke bottle glasses.

  “Do you mind?” I glared at him for emphasis.

  He didn’t stop, but he took a step back. I shook my head in exasperation.

  “What’s up?” Donnie asked. “Is something wrong?”

  I left out the boner, which was troubling because it wouldn’t go away. “That little man is jacking off on me.”

  Donnie turned with a menacing glare which dissolved and became embarrassment. He swung back around and whispered in my ear. “That’s the mayor of Union, New Jersey.”

  He chose the wrong moment to whisper in my ear, because just then a warm sticky sprinkling of cum landed all over my neck.

  Donnie helped me wipe it off the back of my neck with a cocktail napkin. When I turned around to reproach him, the mayor had vanished into the crowd. What if he has AIDS? I sure hope AIDS isn’t transmitted through the skin. Nobody knows much about it. There’s no research because Ronald Reagan’s moral majority just wants us to die. We’re immoral minorities and don’t deserve to know whether you can get AIDS from cum on your skin. I mean, they say it’s safe but how do they know? Their priority was to make sure you couldn’t get it from coffee cups, toilet seats, or sitting on the bus next to an AIDS patient. That was all they cared about. If it involved kissing or sucking or fucking or shooting, no research was being funded. The mayor of Union, New Jersey may have just sealed my fate.

  That’s not entirely true. The truth is that some rich gay men paid for that sort of research out of their own pockets or with their estates. The problem was there was no easy way to teach people about what was safe. So, it was mostly hearsay and rumors in the summer of 1986. The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle did their best, but they were often dealing with rumors that some Chinese cucumber contained the cure, or that junkies caught a different type of AIDS if they bleached their needles. So, a night celebrating sex between men was a potential trip to the horror show. I was convinced the mayor’s semen was burning my skin. I got hives.

  But I was not about to make it Donnie’s problem. We were here to have fun. The first act climax came literally with the stripper pulling off his bikini bottom and after several false starts (it was his first show) he hardened and then shot semen all over the center crowd, who went wild. The rich guys stuffed more money in his socks, squeezing his dick or fingering his butt before letting go.

  I marveled how this was all apparently legal. Before E
thel and her accordion took the stage, I asked Donnie about it.

  “I don’t think it is,” he said, “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  An obese man with greasy hair leaned into our conversation. “Ejaculation is illegal. Everything else is not covered in any statute, because they wrote the blue laws for women, not men.”

  Donnie leaned over and grinned. “Thank you so much.” He shifted his focus to me. My back was to the man. He had no inroads to conversation beyond the interesting facts he shared.

  Softly, I whispered, “Are we avoiding him?”

  Donnie laughed and nodded. “She is so funny!” He was pretending we started a new conversation. This was what they did in New York. The overwhelming crowding of humanity made it necessary to develop mechanisms to protect you from making a connection with another human being. Attitude was one. What Donnie just did was like a magic trick. Then there’s the celebutante approach: kill them with kindness.

  The stripper who came out next was more than I was prepared for. He had big muscles and a little hair on his chest. He was packing serious heat. Even with his ripped jeans on, you could see the outline of a very big dick. His hair was black, but his eyes were green. He wore Doc Marten boots and when he tore off his jeans at the velcro seams, he exposed white tube socks and a very full bikini bottom. I took out my wallet, extracted a bill, and approached the stage in a blind daze. He saw me coming and moved towards me. I realized too late that I had twenty dollars. I couldn’t turn around. The audience was cheering me on. I was a deer on the highway with a whole little New England village screaming at me to get to the other side. I wanted to turn tail and go back to my seat, but it was way too late. Those smoky green eyes were like siren calls, and he was staring at me. When I reached the stage, I went for his sock, but he squatted down and blocked me. He broke the fourth wall. “Hey, it’s alright. Touch it.” He put my hand down his crotch. When he kissed me on the lips, I dropped the bill inside his tight underwear. He stood up, undulating in time to the rather tacky ZZ Top song he had chosen. I thought I was safe, but he had one more public humiliation in store for me. He grabbed my head and held my face to his crotch, humping up and down. My boner throbbed and I had an orgasm in my jeans. He saw the stain spreading and grinned.