The only place I felt safe was at the long-haired hippy bartender’s station. He made constant passes at absolutely anyone, boy or girl, so I knew I wasn’t being singled out. I overheard him introduce himself as Brian to a pudgy girl from Burlingame.
“Is he your brother?” She pointed to me.
Brian looked me up and down, then said, “I’m sure he is. Now you introduce me to your brother, and we’ll get something going.” He was a treasure. He was the sort of San Franciscan that made the city great. David was kissing a blue-eyed towheaded youth. I had my eye on a tall guy with a grimy t-shirt. He must have driven a motorcycle because he had the helmet with his things. He had a jail vibe, like someone who did time for involuntary manslaughter. I didn’t realize at the time that I was attracted to guys like my hick stepfather. What was wrong with me?
After the bar, we went to Sparky’s All-Nite Diner for a burger. I had my key and was able to tiptoe up the steps and get to the couch at about 3AM without disturbing anyone.
Aunt Jessie asked me if I could pick up some shifts for the dishwasher. I shrugged. “I don’t think you want me. I suck at dishes.”
“It’s easy, I’ll show you.”
The problem with working as a dishwasher was not just that you had to wash dishes, but you had to do it with the sadist Gerald.
“Come on, preppy boy, I need salad plates pronto!” He would just say that to throw me off. There were two dozen salad plates stacked by his head, and only three dirty ones. I didn’t listen carefully to the instructions for the dishwasher, which included a warning about frequently cleaning out the trap. As a result, it flooded, and shorted out. I had to wash dishes by hand the rest of the shift. At the end, John, the owner, sat me down.
“Ethan, you are not a dishwasher. You are much better than this work. You will go to an ivy league school. Don’t be upset, but I have to let you go.”
I smiled inwardly. “You’re right, I am a lousy dishwasher.”
We both chuckled. “I will pay you for two weeks.”
“I only worked two days.”
“You must learn this lesson now. Don’t refuse money. Take it and say thank you.”
“Thank you.” He handed me a check for $450.00, which I endorsed and gave to my Dad to cash that evening.
PART FOUR
THERE’S TOO MUCH THERE THERE
When I kissed Jessie goodbye for what I thought would be the last time, I could never have predicted I would be back in California again in disgrace. What could cause an Ivy League know-it-all to fall from grace? It’s all in the mind.
It was late August, and I had to return to Columbia on the last Monday for orientation. My dad worked out a ticket that flew through Nashville, then to Baltimore, with a commuter flight to La Guardia. It was the worst possible red eye. When I landed in Nashville, I had to run through a darkened airport to the People’s Express terminal to catch the next leg. They were closing the doors when I got there. I was so exhausted from running, I doubted I would sleep. I was right.
The commuter plane was like Air Force One. It was a tiny jet, with a roll-up set of steps from which a Kennedy or Carter might wave when arriving. I climbed aboard and marveled at the filthy interior and bleary-eyed commuters. When it passed through turbulence, the cabin dipped and bucked like a rodeo bull. People hit their heads. Lightning flashed all around us. I understood why Buddy Holly died. This was a death trap.
I got to Columbia just in time to meet a pink-faced ‘Ambassador’ - a sweet girl with a permanent smile. How I longed to be that happy. She was comfortably ensconced in an ivy league school on a tenure track to becoming a rich lady. She consulted her directory and showed me to my room on the 9th floor of John Jay. Because in my college essay I told everyone I was gay, I got a single. It was the size of my father’s closet, with a built-in desk and even a teeny tiny closet. There was no dresser - everything had to go on hangers - pants, shoes, underwear. I opened the window to air out the room and was greeted by the sweetest music in New York: the buzz. If you haven’t been there, you may not know it. Certain big cities have it. Los Angeles does not. It is the collective sound of a million voices, car horns, trucks reversing, and radio waves crackling from the top of the Empire State. It’s where jazz comes from. Later in life, I found the buzz in Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Bangkok, London and Rome. Paris was out of tune, and Singapore was too strict to allow the buzz. But it rocked me to sleep at nights.
Once I unpacked my bag, there were still a hundred items that didn’t fit in the room, so I left them on the floor. They stayed there the entire semester.
A knock came on my door. It was an extremely talkative, possibly bipolar blonde from Virginia Beach named Suzanne. As she spoke to me loudly in the hallway, it drew a slow-moving beauty named Olivia into our circle. We shared folk knowledge, of which I had very little. I wanted to know how to reach Miriam. Olivia showed me how to use the phones to get the operator. Miriam was two blocks away on 112th Street. She agreed to meet up with Olivia and Suzanne for Fruit Loops in the cafeteria.
When she got there, we were all on our second bowl.
“I couldn’t get away; my roommate Bear was talking my ears off.”
“You room with a guy?” Olivia asked?
“No, Bear is apparently a woman.”
Miriam was adjusting to New York. She knew it well but hadn’t ever lived there. She loved the energy and the culture, but she missed the safety and comfort of her home in Cambridge.
I had spent the summer there acclimatizing.
“Ethan, you won’t believe this. Brennan got into the American Academy of Recording Arts. He’s going to learn how to mix and combine tracks.”
“Doesn’t he already do that?”
“Yes. He may not learn much. But he gets to be close to us. He will never, under any circumstances, admit to that being a factor but it is.”
I was stoked. Brennan was one of my best friends. We were going to have lots of fun.
Miriam and I waited together in line to register for the classes we needed. Once we got to the front of the line, we submitted our choices. We both picked German Film and Art History. We were both required to take introductory English. I took Japanese and Swimming to round out the schedule.
We met Brennan at the Khyber Pass in the East Village. We had Afghan coffee and Boulanee Khadu - pumpkin turnovers. Brennan found a flat in Hoboken. It wasn’t as terrible as it sounded. The PATH train cost less than the subway, ran 24 hours, and it dropped you off on Christopher Street, Union Square, or Penn Station. The first days of school were strange. Olivia, Suzanne and I were woken in the middle of the night after the first day of class by a fire alarm. We were ordered to march out of Lerner Hall, around the outside, and through the main gates. It was supposed to be a safety drill, but it felt more like a hazing.
In my down time, I went to the work-study office to see about a job placement. I interviewed at the Metropolitan Museum, which paid exactly $5.75/hour. I earned more as a dishwasher. I called downtown and got Malinda at the Milk Bar on the phone.
“Ethan, you’re back?”
“Yeah, do you have an opening for a busboy?”
“Sure. Can you start tonight? I’m desperate.”
I caught the #1 at 116th, transferred at 96th to the express, and back to a different, earlier #1 at Union Square. I was at Seventh Avenue South and Houston in 20 minutes. It was relativity in action - I turned back time and caught an early train that had left the 116th Street station long before I got there.
Bussing was a cakewalk compared to trying to keep a white floor white. I just picked up empty glasses and brought them to the dishwasher upstairs. On the night shift, I got to meet more staff. One doorman, Willy the Boricua, took great interest in me. This was all before I understood that men could be married with kids and still want to fuck guys.
Willy had terrible hair. It was short on top and the sides, long in back. What Willy had was a massive body and a handsome face. He called me over to him the first nigh
t and asked me to sit on his park bench-sized knee.
“You got the right body, Ethan. You could be built. You gotta start now.”
“I don’t know. I’m a wimp.”
“Here, feel this.” He raised his sleeveless arm and curled his bicep. With two hands, I couldn’t get around it.
“I’ll bet your wife loves it.”
“She never knows what hit her.”
I felt stirrings under his baggy acid wash Gotcha pants. “Everything’s big,” he added.
I was terrified. To me, straight men were all my stepfather. They hated homos and would beat the crap out of them if they got the chance. I wish I had understood how it all worked. Willy just saw me as a couple of holes and a big brain to admire his big muscles. He didn’t care what I was as long as I let him fuck me. But, like I said, I hadn’t learned about this aspect of male sexuality - not until I was forty.
“I gotta go wipe down the tables before the crowds come.”
He held me down by my shoulder and waist. “Stay here with me. I got a big problem.”
He glanced down at his baggy pants which were tented unnaturally.
I threw a bar towel over it. “There, that should do it.” and I walked away. I think of Willy as the big one that got away. If I had just said a few choice words, we would have been fucking in my dorm or his truck or wherever as soon as the shift was over. Instead, I rejected him. I believed it was a favor. He was relentless. He didn’t know I was a virgin.
The bar filled up with celebrities - Boy George, Allen Ginsberg, Gene Simmons, Grace Jones. It grew into a portrait gallery of people who had done it - made it in life - became somebody. I wished I could learn from them, but all I got were requests for extra cocktail napkins or a clean surface to do cocaine. Every so often, Scotty, the owner, would call me up to the VIP room, which was just an apartment above the bar. There, anything goes. He would ask me to fetch him one of the bottles from behind the bar. Throstur the hot Norwegian was always happy to give me a fresh bottle of Stoli. I’d bring that up to the room and supply the partiers with more joy juice.
The worst part of the job was making change. Since everyone in New York threw around hundred-dollar bills, the bartenders were constantly running out of smaller bills. They rang a bell which meant I had to come running and get an envelope of cash - usually 2,000.00 and run up to Sheridan Square to make change. The Houston stop was never busy at night, so I had to hike through the village to Washington Square to the A/E station. They always gave change if I asked nicely. The bartenders would give me wads of hundred-dollar bills. I got back 10s, 5s and 1s. Then I ran back down Jones and Morton to get to the bar.
The problem with working nights at a bar when you’re in school is that you have absolutely no time to sleep or study. I would get home at 6am, and my swim class was at 9. I thought I was invincible, that I could do it, but I couldn’t. I stopped going to swim class. By the time I figured out what to do, it was too late to drop. So that was gonna be a big fat F. I only ended up sharing one class with Miriam - German Film History. We marveled at Expressionism and cowered from the Triumph of the Will.
Brennan came to visit often. As my stress over flunking out of swimming got worse, he suggested I start smoking. It turned out to be a great idea. Anytime my anxiety peaked, I just stepped into the common room and had a smoke.
The fire drill from our first night was not supposed to be a repeat, but somebody kept pulling the fire alarm. Each night, we would walk down nine flights of stairs and assemble in Lerner Hall to be counted. It was a nightly occurrence. I was grateful that my job at the Milk Bar kept me out late enough to miss a lot of the drills.
Once you’ve been to Whispers at the Pyramid, you never see gay bars the same way. Columbia had a Gay and Lesbian group. The gays held regular dances at Earl Hall that were, according to the gossip, legendary. Tickets were $25.00. Miriam wanted to see it because of the history so she sprang for two tickets to the Earl Hall Auditorium on a Friday night. I normally never had Fridays off, but I switched with another busser so I could go. I got that anxious feeling that usually leads to a stomachache. I didn’t have the right pedigree to pass as a regular gay. I was too picky. None of these guys were anything like Roy the doorman. They were effete. If it were Brideshead Revisited, I was a scullery maid and the men were all Anthony Blanche. Not a Sebastian nor Charles in the bunch. I wasn’t esthetically pleasing to the snooty crowd. I dressed too punk. Nobody said this aloud, it was just a series of judgments I passed in my own mind, centered around the premise that I was unlovable. I didn’t care what they thought because they weren’t hot. At Whispers night, I could dress how I wanted, and the crowd was totally in sync with my esthetic. This posh Columbia dance, historic though it may be, was measured in coffee spoons. In the room the homos come and go, talking of Michelangelo.
Miriam was disappointed that I disliked the dance. She kept pointing out men that she thought were gorgeous. We had really different types. She liked her men intelligent, thin, and very feminine. I was searching for the Brawny paper towel man. Tears welled up in my eyes. I didn’t belong.
We left the dance early. Miriam was bewildered by my misery.
“Ethan, there were so many hot guys there.”
“Hot is in the eye of the beholder. And even if I did think they were hot, they would never want someone like me.”
Miriam sighed. “I wish you could see you the way I see you.”
We parted ways. Miriam went back to the dance where she met a female Spanish teacher and started her first lesbian affair.
One Tuesday night, Suzanne Weber and I were shooting the breeze. I had just found a coveted pair of platform basketball sneakers in lemon yellow. They were a little too small for me, so I gave them to Suzanne to try on. She loved them. They were perfect for her because she had yellow hair. She did runway up and down the hallway until we collapsed in giggles. We drank a pint of Jack Daniels, chasing it with Pepsi. The room threatened to spin. Then the motherfucking alarm went off.
“That’s it. I’m not going. I’m hiding in the closet.”
“Can I join you?”
“Bring the Jack and Pepsi.”
We huddled in my tiny closet, quiet as church mice. Doug the floor counselor banged on and opened every door. What he said was disturbing.
“This isn’t a drill. We’ve got a fire on this floor.”
I turned to Suzanne. “Should we pretend we were asleep and just woke up?”
“No, Doug already checked in here and we weren’t there.”
I smelled smoke. Then we heard two-way communication radios and rubber boots stomping around. The smoke grew thicker. We were going to die for our lazy stupidity.
Suzanne pushed my closet door open.
“They’re not coming back in here. We might as well chill in the dark.” She reasoned.
We sat quietly in the dark until the firemen left, and we heard happy students returning to their rooms.
I opened the door right when Olivia passed by.
“No! Were you two up here? Did you know it was a real fire?”
“Yeah, we heard the firemen.”
“Toby the wrestler from Kansas smoked in bed. Thank god he’s not hurt.”
Toby the wrestler had the hottest body I had ever seen on a man. But we couldn’t have less in common. I was a California boy gone preppy, then new wave. He was a wholesome cowboy on the Great Plains with a girlfriend who shared the throne with him at homecoming. He was oblivious to his male beauty, so he never knew why I was staring at him in the halls. One night he got drunk. I was taking a shower and he opened the curtain and stared at me, naked, swaying on his feet.
“Wrong shower, Toby.”
“Are you sure?”
He stumbled off to another stall. I think I cock-blocked myself.
Suzanne had a boyfriend in the Marines named Paul. He came up to visit one week, and somehow, we all ended up drunk in my tiny room. Her boyfriend Paul, when I was sober, was pretty unattractive. He w
as short and wiry, with steel rimmed glasses and a mustache. With beer goggles, he transformed into a beautiful sexy man. I was drunk enough to tell him so. He asked me to kiss him. Before I could, Suzanne plopped down between us.
“Oh no you don’t!”
Paul kept leaning closer to me and me to him. Suzanne pushed our heads apart.
“It’s time to go now.” Paul protested in disappointment. They stumbled back to Suzanne’s room and had loud sex.
Smoking was a wonderful habit. I had something to do during class breaks. I watched M with Miriam. Halfway through the film, I remembered I left my backpack in the cafeteria. I wanted a cigarette, but it was in the pack. So, I left the building. I would be locked out unless I could hold the door ajar. I had nothing obvious, so I stuck my wallet in the door and ran across the street to the cafeteria. I found my backpack, nothing missing. I ran back across the street and my wallet was gone. I was locked out, and my California Driver’s License, my Columbia ID, my Manny Hanny ATM card, and my cash were gone forever. I spent the rest of the week skipping class to go take care of replacing what I could. My Dad mailed me a lost or stolen Driver’s License replacement form. It cost $12.00 and I had to use a money order because they wouldn’t accept out of state checks. Columbia even charged me $5.00 to replace my Student ID. Manufacturers Hanover Trust was the best bank in the world. They gave me a temporary ATM card to use while I waited for the replacement. None of it cost a penny. I withdrew a hundred dollars because it was so damn easy - the bank manager brought me the money herself and filled out the withdrawal slip. When the assistant manager brought me a tray of cookies I almost cried.
Olivia hooked me up with two tabs of acid. I wanted to trip with Brennan. He had never tripped, and he was the smartest person I knew. It was going to be a blast. Brennan didn’t seem worried about it. I went to his apartment in Hoboken on the PATH train. We put the little bits of paper under our tongue. It was fall - the wind blew cold off the Hudson. We walked down 1st Street towards the PATH station. We passed a pizza parlor where a muscled Jersey dude with sleepy green eyes was tossing crust in the air and catching it on his beautiful, floured hands.
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