by Jarett Kobek
ALSO BY JARETT KOBEK
I Hate the Internet
ATTA
Soft & Cuddly
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
penguin.com
Copyright © 2017 by Jarett Kobek
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
“You Like It Real,” lyrics by Christopher Means. © 1993 Holy Cow. Used by permission of Christopher Means.
“Night Clubbing” by Michael Musto, The Village Voice, April 23, 1996. Copyright © 2017, The Village Voice, LLC. Reprinted with permission of The Village Voice.
Hand lettering here by Sarina Rahman
ISBN (hardcover) 9780735222489
ISBN (ebook) 9780735222496
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
To e.j., wherever she may be on this American continent
Contents
Also by Jarett Kobek
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
SEPTEMBER 1986: Baby’s Parents Murder Each Other So Baby Goes to New York
OCTOBER 1986: Baby Learns One or Two Things About Life in New York
NOVEMBER 1986: Adeline Teaches Baby About Marijuana, the Secular Sacrament of California
DECEMBER 1986: Baby Talks to Thomas M. Disch
JANUARY 1ST, 1987: Adeline Meets Her New Boyfriend
FEBRUARY 1987: Suzanne Comes to Visit
FEBRUARY 1987: Suzanne Goes Home
MARCH 1987: Adeline and Baby See Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
MARCH 1987: 84 Second Avenue
APRIL 1987: Adeline Discovers Baby’s Employment Status
APRIL 1987: Adeline Convinces Baby and Kevin to Have Sex
MAY 1987: Adeline and Baby Move to East 7th Street
JUNE 1987: Spider-Man Gets Married
AUGUST 1987: Adeline Runs into Kevin at the Kiev
FEBRUARY 1988: Baby and Adeline Go to Pasadena
FEBRUARY 1988: Suzanne Changes Baby’s Life
MARCH 1988: Stacie
MARCH 1988: Baby Dreams
APRIL 1988: Baby, Adeline, and Stacie Go to Scream
APRIL 1988: Suzanne Demonstrates the Pitfalls of Alcoholism
MAY 1988: Baby Gets into NYU
MAY 1988: Adeline Makes a Decision
JULY 1988: Baby Meets Jaime’s Friends
AUGUST 1988: Baby Calls Adeline
AUGUST 1988: Adeline Receives an Unwelcome Tutorial on the Nature of the Police State
AUGUST 1988: Adeline Meets Daniel Rakowitz
OCTOBER 1988: Минерва
FEBRUARY 1989: Baby Invites Adeline to Bret Easton Ellis’s Apartment
MARCH 1989: A Radical Shindig at the Anarchist Switchboard
MARCH 1989: Adeline Goes on Three Dates
MARCH 1989: Adeline and Jon Have Sex
APRIL 1989: Minerva ♥ Jeremy
MAY 1989: Adeline Gets Sick
AUGUST 1989: Daniel Rakowitz
1988, 1989, 1990: Some Things That Happened to Baby During His Nervous Breakdown, Presented in a Random Order
JANUARY 1991: Adeline Comes Back from a Trip with Jon
APRIL 1991: David Wojnarowicz
JUNE 1991: Stacie Visits New York
JANUARY 1992: Baby Beats Jon in the Street
FEBRUARY 1992: Baby Gets a Letter from Parker Brickley
MARCH 1992: Patrick Geoffrois
MARCH 1992: Baby and Erik See Kiss Me Deadly
APRIL 1992: More Patrick Geoffrois and His Cacophony
MAY 1992: Baby Goes to Erik’s Hometown
JULY 1992: David Wojnarowicz Dies
JULY 1992: Baby Goes to Disco 2000
AUGUST 1992: Baby’s Birthday
FEBRUARY 1993: Adeline Splits from the Big Shitty
MARCH 1993: Adeline Wanders Around San Francisco
MARCH 1993: Nash Mac
APRIL 1993: Adeline and Jeremy Go to a Signing at Comic Relief
MAY 1993: ADELINE ♥ Baby
JUNE 1993: Jeremy Makes a Proposition
JULY 1993: Daddy Was in KGB Gets a Good Review
JULY 1993: D.O.T.T. Goes Gold
OCTOBER 1993: Adeline Receives a Postcard
DECEMBER 1993: Dorian Corey
JANUARY 1994: Baby Attends the Launch for Philip Levine’s The Bread of Time
FEBRUARY 1994: Baby Sees Schindler’s List
FEBRUARY 1994: Karen Spencer
MARCH 1994: Baby Adopts the King of France
APRIL 1994: Baby’s New Novel
MAY 1994: Baby Sees a Ghost
JUNE 1994: Baby Turns In His Manuscript
AUGUST 1994: Reunion
AUGUST 1994: Reunion, Part Two
NEW YEAR’S EVE 1994: Baby and Adeline Watch Television
APRIL 1995: Baby and Adeline Go to Norman Mailer’s House
APRIL 1995: Trouble in Club Land
MAY 1995: Adeline Has Lunch with Thomas Cromwell, Touches the Berlin Wall (Again)
JUNE 1995: Dinner at Tom and Aubrey’s
NOVEMBER 1995: Suzanne Comes to New York City
MARCH 1996: Baby Explains How the World Works
APRIL 1996: Peter Gatien Fires Michael Alig
APRIL 1996: Baby and Adeline Go to the Mars Bar
APRIL 1996: Michael Musto Breaks a Story
MAY 1996: Baby and Parker Play Pool
JUNE 1996: Baby Looks for Michael
SEPTEMBER 1996: Baby and Adeline See Freaks
SEPTEMBER 1996: Baby Does an Event at the Union Square Barnes & Noble
OCTOBER 1996: Baby Goes on a Book Tour
NOVEMBER 1996: Baby Goes to Honey Trap
DECEMBER 1996: Michael Alig Is Arrested
DECEMBER 1996: Adeline Breaks the News
DECEMBER 1996: Baby Attempts a New Book
CHRISTMAS DAY 1996
About the Author
SEPTEMBER 1986
Baby’s Parents Murder Each Other So Baby Goes to New York
I moved to New York not long after my mother killed my father, or was it my father who murdered my mother? Anyhoo, in a red haze of blood and broken bone, one did in the other. Several weeks were spent filling out paperwork and cleaning up the gore.
After I finished with these burdens, I abandoned my siblings and boarded a Greyhound bus in the parking lot of a corner store on the outskirts of my Podunk little Wisconsin town. Thirty-six hours later, I was in the city.
When I came out of the Port Authority, a building that scared me shitless, I couldn’t see the Empire State Building, so I asked a cop how to get to the river. He looked at me and laughed, hard, because of how countrified I was, a real corn poke, and showed me which direction was west.
I walked on 42nd in daylight. No one mugged me. At the end of the street, I made my way across the highway and onto a pier. I looked out at the Hudson River. I looked out at New Jersey. I watched boats on the river. I saw the distant Statue of Liberty and believed in her gaudy symbolism.
People in New York would never understand about my Podunk little Wisconsin town. It was an issue of size. Even in Jerkwater, Ohio, or Backstabbing, Pennsylvania, you still had neighborhoods and streets and thousands of citizens. My Podunk little town was seven hundred people, mostly farmers.
In a place like that, what you do for fun, for amusement, is drive, day in, day out, day in, day out. You cruise the three blocks of Main Street in your car, seeing boys you knew from school, pretending that you want to fuck the girls.
So with the possibility of NYC, I was like, okay, please. I am yours. You may conquer me. I submit to your underground system of the soul. Bring me to 241st Street and White Plains Road. Bring me to Coney Island. Bring me to Midtown. Bring me to Morningside Heights. Bring me to Flushing, Gowanus, Wall Street. I am yours. I am yours. Free me from the tyranny of the automobile!
I could walk, at last, I could walk. Back in Wisconsin, you’d drive for three solid hours to buy an album, or a book, or pants, or anything. And that would only bring you to what people back home call a city, a place of maybe ten thousand people.
Oh people, oh the people, oh New York, oh your glorious people. Your Puerto Ricans, your Hebrews, your Muslims, your Chinese, your Eurotrash, that fat little fuck Norman Mailer, your uptown rich socialites, your downtown scum, your Black Americans, your Koreans, your Haitians, your Jamaicans, your Italians, your kitchen Irish, Julian Schnabel, your Far Rockaway and Staten Island white trash. Oh New York, I loved your people. They were all so beautiful! Many of them were hideous, really ugly with terrible teeth, but even the ugly ones were beautiful too! Oh I was in heaven.
And your fags, New York, oh god, your fags. All I hoped was that they would love me.
I was as queer as a wooden nickel, but Wisconsin hadn’t offered this yokel much opportunity for erotic love, so what common language could I even speak with the cocksmen and leatherboys?
One day in ninth grade, I made the mistake of blowing my best friend, Abraham. I was afraid to let Abe come in my mouth, so I got him to the edge and made him spasm into his blanket. As punishment, he refused to reciprocate, which was a real downer, but he did give me a handjob, which was okay.
I went home and thought about it. I decided that I’d let my best friend come in my mouth.
The next day, as I received the first blowjob of my life, in walked his mother. She saw everything. Her son, naked, me, naked, my cock in his mouth, my hands on the light down of his stomach. I ran out of their house and drove home. Neither Abe nor his mother ever said a word, but it ruined the friendship and I spent my high school years clutched by fear, worried that I’d need to leave our town in shame.
I never did anything else, not with anyone other than a few girls who were kissed to keep up appearances. Their tongues in my mouth like soft robots, offering abstract interest but no sexual desire, no longing, no need.
And then, New York, there you were, like a homo homecoming queen standing before me, hands on your hips, regarding this shy wallflower. With your Meatpacking District, your West Village piers and Fire Island. I was yours, crying out, Oh, take me, take me, take me!
But before anything could happen, I needed a place to stay.
*
A guy from my Podunk little town had moved to the city. This guy from my Podunk little town was about three years older than me. I asked the guy’s brother for the guy’s phone number.
—Watch out, his brother said, we don’t talk much with him and I heard he’s living in squalor.
Squalor sounded fabulous. I didn’t care about the phone bill, so I called New York. His name was David.
A girl answered. I asked for David.
—Okay, dude, she said, hold on.
I waited for about ten minutes. When he came to the phone, he spoke with this high, nasal voice.
—Hey, he whined, is this El Gato?
—It’s me, I said, you know me, remember?
But he didn’t.
—I’m the one, I said, remember, I’m that guy who set the school record for both the fifty- and hundred-yard dashes in the same day?
—Oh, yeah, he said, you, that guy, why are you calling?
I begged and groveled until he said that if I made it out east, I could stay with him, giving me his address on 12th Street. David explained the crude navigational tools of New York life, telling me to look for the Empire State Building and then head in that direction. Once I was past that giant, north and south could be discerned by looking for the Twin Towers, the relative position of which also indicated east from west. This method was useless for people who went above 30th Street, but come on, David said, who goes above 30th Street? Maybe some assholes for drugs.
*
I walked from the highway to Times Square. That was some hell of a place. You know all about it. Who doesn’t? The sex and sleaze that made its butterfly transformation into a tourist trap, a Walt Disney wonderland. I saw it happen, or, well, I was in the city while it happened, because, really, it was going above 30th Street. Who went to Times Square? Maybe for Club USA. But otherwise?
Moving along Broadway, I took in the stores and buildings. As I was a country bumpkin, I couldn’t control my personal space. I stumbled into people with an alarming frequency. Most brushed past without a look back. A few cursed me to the high heavens.
When I got to Union Square, it was a ruin, a park surrounded by hookers and pimps and filled with drug dealers. I didn’t know why men kept saying, Works, works, works, you need some works?
—Sorry, sir, but I’m not seeking employment.
—What the fuck is wrong with you?
I shut up and walked until I got to 12th Street. Then I headed through the East Village and into Alphabet City. David’d said his place was in an old brownstone between B and C. It took a minute to find because the address wasn’t on the building. I knocked and knocked but there was no answer. I tried the door. The knob gave way. I went inside.
The place was burned out and dirty, the color of charred wood, trash everywhere, graffiti on the walls. Exposed wiring, exposed plumbing, exposed insulation. I didn’t see anyone.
—Hello, David?
I walked in a little farther and repeated myself. A punk rock-looking guy came out from behind the staircase. Other than album covers and television and pictures in magazines, this was the first time I had ever seen a punk rock-looking guy.
—What do you want? asked the punk rock-looking guy.
—I’m looking for David?
—Who’s fucking David?
—David, he’s from my hometown. Back in Wisconsin? We talked last week, he gave me this address.
—Try upstairs, said the punk rock-looking guy, but don’t steal nothing.
I climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor. Things crunched and broke beneath my feet. I peered inside one of the bedrooms. I couldn’t see a thing. I flipped a light switch. There wasn’t any power.
—David, David, where are you, David?
Then I heard a weak voice.
—Come here, said the voice from a room across the hall.
I went in.
—David? I asked of the darkness.
—Over here, someone said.
I went toward the voice. A young man lay atop a pile of old rags.
Back home, he’d been beautiful. I remembered his skin with its network of blue arteries. Now, several compacted layers of dirt darkened his acne-strewn flesh, dimming its grim tattoos. Grease matted down his brown hair.
—Who are you? he asked.
—David, it’s me, remember? I’m that kid who set the records for
the fifty- and hundred-yard dashes?
—Hey, man, you’re in New York?
I sat beside David on another pile of dirty clothes. I didn’t say much. I hadn’t thought this far ahead. Even if he hadn’t been living in squalor, what could we talk about? The only thing I knew about David was how hard I’d crushed on him in tenth grade. For two solid weeks, I’d masturbated thinking about his cock in my mouth. It was a cavalcade of semen, real and imagined.
David slumped over, his chin down on his chest. I’d never seen a junky before, so I thought he was tired. Twenty minutes passed. I couldn’t take it anymore.
—David, I said, David, wake up.
—Oh man, you’re still here? How’d you get here?
—Remember when we talked on the phone?
—No?
—You said I could stay with you.
—I did?
—Yeah.
—Rent’s fifty dollars a week.
—Fifty dollars a week?
—City’s expensive. Everyone pays. You give it to me, I give it to the boss.
—You didn’t mention rent on the phone.
But talking was pointless. He’d fallen back asleep.
I looked for a safe place to put my bag. The room’s main features were two separate stacks of old mattresses, around which were scattered several broken tables.
Someone had taped black construction paper over the windows. Dirty garments and plastic food wrappers. I pushed some clothes into the far corner and stashed my bag under the pile. I scattered old cupcake wrappers on top of the clothes.
Back in the hallway, a voice boomed down through the wooden floorboards of the third story. I started toward the first floor but stopped because the shadows moved.
—You do realize that you needn’t pay him, don’t you? David is as full of it as an overflowing latrine. There is no rent. There is no landlord. This is a squat, darling.
The shadows walked forward. A girl, a year or so older than me, nineteen or twenty, dressed in a checkered gray skirt, wearing ugly yellow sneakers and torn up black tights. Her red hair was crazy, spiky. She’d dyed in a few black streaks.
—No soul in this house of ill repute pays rent, she said. David wants to score. You look like an easy mark.
