We went to a lovely rendezvous bar (Swiss term for a more social and formal boîte, as opposed to a cruise bar, a pickup joint). We bellied up to the bar and ordered a round of drinks. At the end of the bar stood a dream of a man in black trousers, a black turtleneck, and a hunter-green wool blazer. Tall and dark, he had the sexy stubble of a two- or three-day holiday from shaving. He was dreamy, the kind of man I would order. I remember once complaining to Michahaze that we didn’t have many gay friends. His reply: “That’s because you try to sleep with everyone we meet.”
I quickly introduced myself, Michahaze, and Big Daddy, and we asked him about the scene, which cruise bars and baths we should hit. Felix was his name. He lived in Zurich. He had a lover, also Swiss, but the lover lived in New York. Felix gave us the rundown. It was too late for the baths, as they closed early. He knew lots of bars. Why not follow him to one?
At the next bar, while Michahaze and Big Daddy struck up a conversation with some people, I moved in on Felix. With the bluster of a third of a bottle of vodka and change, I told him he was beautiful. That I wanted him. The feeling was mutual, he said. I told him that I wanted us to be naked and told him explicitly what I wanted to do to him once we were naked.
With a lick of his smiling lips he said, “Perhaps we should go for a walk?”
“I don’t think my lover would like that.” I quickly rethought that. We have gone to a bathhouse. We have had three-ways. Fortified with liquor courage, I asked Michahaze if he minded.
He minded. “Just what are you saying?”
“Just kidding.”
Too late. I had crossed a line. No going back. I explained that I hadn’t thought he would mind since we had just had a three-way in Paris. Michahaze couldn’t believe his ears. I couldn’t believe my mouth. We stood in the seedy, smoky, crowded, small bar and melted down.
I’d been having doubts for the last year, I told him. “I think you’re a wonderful person but I don’t know if I love you anymore. I think I need to be on my own.”
“Are you saying it’s over?”
“Yes, I’m saying it’s over.”
The look of stunned hurt on his face, like a child who has just been hit, was harder for me to take than his next move. He took off his ring and shoved it in my hand. “You’re horrible! Just horrible!” His hurt had burned into anger. “What would your mother think?”
“Don’t bring her into this!” But she was always there, even when she was an ocean away. She constantly haunted my thoughts, especially when I was doing something of which she wouldn’t approve. The mantra in my head wasn’t WWMJD? (What would Mama Jean do?), but WWMJT? (What would Mama Jean think?). She became my conscience, a termagant sitting on my shoulder in her lynx-fur coat and shaking her finger. I kept air-biting her finger until she went away, the way our dog Brennan used to do when she scolded him.
I took off my ring and put it in my pocket along with his. While he repeated how horrible I was, I fondled the rings in my pocket and shook my head humbly in agreement. I heard the ping of something hitting the stone floor. I thought it was a coin. Before I could stoop to see what it was, the bartender was showing us out the door. Our behavior was verboten there.
We continued our fight on the cobblestoned street. I told Michahaze he needed to go home to get away from this. He refused. I begged him to let me get a cab. After a breathless silence, I said, “Well, I’m going back in the bar.” Even though I was saturated with guilt, I still wanted Felix and was on autopilot. A stiff dick knows no conscience, as Mama Jean always said.
Practical Michahaze emerged. How would I get back home? What would I do for the rest of the trip? Despite all of the horrible things that I had said, he was still trying to salvage what was left of us and look after me, which made me feel even more guilty and still in love with him. We finally left together in silence and went back to the apartment. Michahaze crawled into bed and I crawled on the floor, still in my street clothes, to further humble myself.
“I wish I had a gun, Michael, because I’d kill myself. You’re right. I am awful.”
His face turned away from me in disgust. “Oh, stop it. Go to sleep.”
I felt for the rings in my pocket. Only one was there. That ping on the stone floor I’d heard in the bar had been my ring. I returned to the bar the next day to look for it, but like the black beret from college, it was never to be seen again.
I wanted that ring back. I wanted Michahaze back. Michahaze, despite my drunken transgression, never left.
* * *
I had written down this tale in my journal, which also contained enchanting tales of recreational fun with drugs such as Ecstasy. Mama Jean helped herself to the journal on that Christmas visit. “I’m worried about you. Seriously worried about you,” she said, glaring at me as my red diary sat in her lap. “Do you know what you’re doing? The drinking is bad enough, but do you know what that drug, Ecstasy, does to your body? I’ve read about it.” She crossed her arms in a giant X to let me know that she knew the slang term for it, but the gesture looked more like a giant verboten sign. “And going into those seedy places in Paris where you can catch God knows what. Remember, Jamie, a moment’s pleasure isn’t worth a lifetime of regret.”
Do I call her Pandora for opening my red box? No. I didn’t bother to register anger because I knew that the contents of the diary trumped my feelings. Besides, the journal was under her roof, so fair game. I told her that I was an adult and was having a little fun. That I was in control of it. Careful. Blah, blah, blah.
Now, back in Beaumont at Christmas, a day or so after that revelation, I was dragging in at five A.M. My hopes that she was still asleep were defeated when I walked in the back door and the lights were on. I walked down the hall to the open double doors of her bedroom and sheepishly looked in.
Dad, looking drained, was standing just inside her bedroom. “Jamie, your mother has been up all night, worried sick,” he said like a weatherman announcing a hurricane that’s about to—
Hit!
“God … damn it!” Farther into the cavernous room of peachy pink sat Mama Jean in her floral nightgown on the edge of her king-size, floral bedspread that matched the floral fabric of the quilted headboard that matched the floral fabric of the window drapes that matched the floral wallpaper behind the bed. It is a not-so-secret garden. She was holding the phone in her hand. She slammed it down on the cradle and screamed, “Where the hell have you been?! I’ve been calling all over town, not knowing if you were dead or alive.” Dead seems like a better option for me right now.
“I fell asleep at a friend’s,” I lied.
“A friend’s?! Bullshit!” Her teeth were bared and her eyes were narrowed in a white-hot glare.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry” was all I could say.
“You ought to be on a couch somewhere!” Her phrase for anyone whom she felt was in need of psychiatric help. I was speechless.
As I walked away, she fired one more shot. “And I feel sorry for Michael!”
THIRTEEN
The Short and Long of It
Les Hommes Bookstore was a mere two blocks away from the Works gay bar. I sometimes popped in there for a quickie after a night of carousing, if nothing panned out at the Works, which I had renamed the Last Chance Saloon. Les Hommes was not a Barnes & Noble or a cozy little hole-in-the-wall specializing in used and rare books. It was a gay porn shop with “buddy booths” in the back for impromptu assignations. I don’t think any books were traded there, but the patrons were certainly used if not rare. Les hommes means “the men” in French, merci beaucoup.
It was on a side street, and even though booze wasn’t served, it had a speakeasy feel. The gray metal door with its twelve-inch-square, blacked-out window faded into the streetscape. You wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking for it. A buzzer was at chin level next to the door. I rang and was immediately buzzed in. I made the cut. I climbed up the dimly lit stairs, careful not to trip on the peeling linoleum. Even though it was a fligh
t up, the place had a distinctly subterranean feel, like entering the underworld. At the top of the stairs I passed through another door (no buzzer required for this one).
The main floor was harshly overlit. Fluorescent lights exposed a wide assortment of children’s fairy-tale videos: Pinocchio, Bambi, Cinderella. Mayor Rudy Giuliani had recently cleaned up sleaze in the city, and the ridiculous compromise that businesses such as Les Hommes had to make was the devotion of prime shelf real estate to family products. I didn’t browse the selection, but walked directly to the bulletproof Plexiglas cashier window.
“One for the back,” I said, and pushed my eight dollars through the money slot. The Indian man behind the window rang me up on the manual cash register, staring through me like a zombie. He could have been a tollbooth clerk on the New Jersey Turnpike. Kah-clunk, I heard as he depressed an unseen button to release the turnstile that allowed entry to the buddy booths. Above the turnstile a plastic sign read NO REFUNDS. NO REENTRY. NOT RESPONSIBLE … The FOR LOST OR STOLEN GOODS line had broken off. But NOT RESPONSIBLE just about summed it up for a place like this.
The buddy-booth section consisted of a long row of plywood cells along a grimy hallway of broken red and yellow tiles lit by slightly dimmer fluorescent lights. The booths were no more than three feet square and featured a small screen with flickering blue movies. The rows of doors opened in with metal slide locks near the top.
I had been here before, and it was never a sure thing. The clientele usually seemed old and desiccated to my twenty-seven-year-old eyes, but occasionally a hottie lurked behind one of the plywood doors of the place, reminding me of a porno version of Let’s Make a Deal.
Tonight the pickings were slim. I walked the hallway like a jailhouse warden on patrol for final bed check. A crypt keeper in booth number one. Several well-oiled porn stars in booths two and three (on the screens, that is). Darkness Invisible in booth number four, which is to say that the door was cracked open, but the transient resident was hiding in the shadows. Never a good sign. A tall, skinny man with extreme blond highlights gave me a one-eyed leer on his own patrol down the hall. He appeared to be drunker than I was. I ignored his gaze as I walked silently past him. An unspoken rule of etiquette in venues such as this is that no words be uttered, lest anyone break the mythological sexual tension looming in the stale air. The man in the last booth was a bit of an oasis. He was about my age and height. Dark brown hair. Slim. Good haircut. His five-o’clock shadow added to his sex appeal in a George Michael kind of way.
I gave him the look of love and loitered outside his booth. He seemed to return my gaze, so I approached. He raised his hand in halt and said, “I’m taking a break.” Ouch. When words are spoken, they are those, and they are the gentle way of saying “go pound sand.”
Not only did it hurt, but it infuriated me too. Taking a break from what? All of the pageant winners strutting their stuff on this dingy runway? I’m just as good-looking as he is. I’m certainly better-looking than the other choices at hand! And wasn’t he giving me the eye? Then I realized that he was eyeing the video screen above my head in the hall. Oh, the humiliation of unrequited love.
I retraced my steps and checked out the booths again in the bored way you repeatedly check the refrigerator between commercial breaks hoping that food you want to eat that wasn’t there before will magically appear. After a couple of strolls, I went back to Darkness Invisible. I stood outside the cracked door, but couldn’t even see a pair of blinking spook-house eyes. The door creaked open to reveal more of the booth but no occupant.
“Psst. Psst.”
I looked for the source.
“Psst. Psst.”
I looked down. Darkness … Visible. There he was. A little person. A very little person. About four foot eight. A dwarf. Aren’t there two kinds of dwarfs, proportionate and disproportionate?
He beckoned me into the booth with a hand wave and a nod.
I thought I had tasted the full range of male flavors, but this was a first. As I stood there contemplating, he gave me another nod. What to do? It’s an adventure, new frontier. Oh, why not?
I entered his booth. The porno screen cast a grayish-blue light, but kept the room in enough shadow to hide the filthy floor. He stood in a corner by the door. He seemed to be all head and torso resting on baby legs, a putto come to life. He was cute in his red plaid shirt and khaki pants, his brown hair short and combed to the side. He looked young, but do dwarfs ever look their age?
As soon as I latched the door, he pulled down his britches. Out popped a staggering prize of manhood. It would have been an eye-popper on a six-foot-two man, but on a four-foot-eight man, it was truly a third leg.
Definitely a disproportionate dwarf.
He invited me to sample his supply. I accepted by squatting on my haunches. That merely brought us to eye level, crowding the corner. He scooted away from me to the corner diagonally opposite. Remaining on my haunches, I let my upper body fall to meet him, bisecting the booth. I grabbed on to his hips as I dipped my head, my profile nearly grazing the nasty floor. I went to town on his blue-ribbon-award winner, my body performing a painful modern dance that would have made a Martha Graham dancer ache. Never have I worked so hard for so little and so much at the same time.
Mama Jean always intruded in times like these. WWMJT? The first time I had sex with a black man she was right there. As the man took me from behind and my head was bobbing up and down in a one-two motion, a miniature apparition of Mama Jean in her pink, full-length nightgown floated in front of me waving her index finger left and right: “Don’t play Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner with me!” She didn’t warn me about dwarfs.
After I had gorged myself for a while, he tugged on my crotch. I panicked. Mine was nowhere near the size of his. In fact—oh, I’ll say it—his dwarfed mine by comparison. Will he be disappointed? Will he laugh? He kept tugging. Finally, I stood up and fed him with ease. After a while he broke the silence and suggested that we see if anyone wanted to join us. Maybe he was disappointed.
“Sure. Why not?” I said.
We turned and faced the door. Since he’d made the suggestion, I waited for him to take the lead and open the door. Nothing. Then I felt a tug on my trouser leg. I looked down. He was pointing up. I followed the arrow of his index finger to the door’s latch in front of my eyes. Oh.
As I unlatched the door, a million little questions buzzed in my head. How does he reach the buzzer on the street? How does he pay the gatekeeper at the cashier booth? Or does he slip below the gatekeeper’s radar and get in free? Is he ever mistaken for an actual customer for the fairy-tale videos?
We didn’t get any takers, nor was there anyone we wanted to take, so we went back to each other. I reached down to pick him up at the hips. Before lifting, I asked, “Do you mind?”
“No. Whatever gets the job done.” You can’t argue with success.
So I lifted him like a proud daddy and made a human pacifier out of him. My flying putto was in heaven. I was in the clouds. When we finished, we left each other the way most such encounters ended: “Thanks, man.” “Yeah. See you around.”
What a fun little adventure, I thought. And I owe it all to alcohol.
FOURTEEN
Is That All There Is?
“Play it again! Play it again!” slurred Mr. Parker like a drunk at a bar begging for just one more drink. I did as I was told and pointed the remote control at the CD player and hit repeat. For the fourth time Peggy Lee’s whispery voice haunted the living room of West Eighty-second Street with “Is That All There Is?”
Mr. Parker, who had remained my best friend since the “Where’s my beret?!” college night, had just moved to New York from Los Angeles. He was staying with Michahaze and me for a couple of weeks until his boyfriend, Bunny, joined him to find their own place. We were having four A.M. nightcaps after another night of carousing.
Since he’d hit town, I was showing him every bar, boîte, and ballroom I frequented, high to low. We had tak
en Peggy’s advice to break out the booze and have a ball. Every night. Michahaze had opted out of this night. “I’ve had enough,” he said with the implication Haven’t you? I hadn’t. Perhaps he doesn’t like to drink as much as I. Was it a school night? Probably, but at twenty-eight I had no problem making it to work after a late night. Or three.
In a louche, seen-it-all, resigned demeanor, Peggy sang verse after verse about a life of tragedy and letdowns, from the fire at her childhood home, to being bored by the spectacle of the circus, to the end of a first love, while being backed up by a tuba vamp. Each disappointment was met with the question “Is that all there is to a ___”—fill in the blank. A fire, a circus, love? Her answer? Keep dancing and boozing. Have a ball.
“My God, that song is brilliant!” Mr. Parker said with his head thrown back and his arms stretched out with his palms facing up, as if in religious supplication.
“Shhh!” I whispered. “Michahaze is asleep.” I pointed my head toward our bedroom. It was nearly four A.M. .
Mr. Parker held an index finger to his mouth in a grand shhh gesture. “Right. Right,” he said, sotto voce and bug-eyed. “But I have to say that this song may be the greatest song ever. And Peggy may be the greatest singer in all of Christendom. God, I’m a Peggy Person.” He looked at me with besotted eyes and asked me rhetorically, “Jamie, are you a Peggy Person?”
“You better believe it!” I slurred back, mirroring his goggle-eyed glaze. “Peggy People are the luckiest people in the world.”
“That’s right, baby!”
I took a gulp of one of the bourbon on the rocks I had poured for us. I thought of myself as a little boy and that first moment of being instantly mesmerized by her ghostly figure wrapped in a massive cloud of white chiffon and singing that song on some variety show. My appreciation of Peggy’s oeuvre had since expanded beyond “Is That All There Is?” to her big-band swing days to her cool “Fever” jazz days and beyond. Her breathy voice was so sensual, a feline purr, as if she were your lover singing next to you in bed; her phrasing so nuanced and subtle that the meaning of the songs as interpreted by her were perceived in flashes, the way lightning can illuminate a dark room just long enough for you to see what you need to find. With her minimalist phrasing she could nail the essence of a song by her pauses, what she didn’t say. Like the best painters and sculptors, she knew that the deepest meanings often reside in the void of negative space.
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