The Future Won't Be Long

by Jarett Kobek

  FOOD FIGHT. A melee erupted, fried food tossed in every direction. Adeline threw a Big Mac across the room, hitting the right side of a queen’s face. The queen spun around to see the origins of this missile, but as she attempted to trace the trajectory, another hamburger hit her in the nose. French fries fell like arrows at Agincourt.

  Everyone had to leave, under threat of the cops being called. Michael Alig yelled that they couldn’t call the cops, not really, they had a business arrangement. But everyone was gay, in drag, high. No one wanted to deal with cops.

  *

  Then there was the time when Baby started noticing how many bald women hung around the clubs. Why are they all shaving their heads?

  *

  Then there was the time when Michael Alig explained how to rule the world.

  —Don’t be such a bitch, he said. Shut up and fucking listen! Think of Andy Warhol. What did Andy do when they wouldn’t let him inside? He said, Who cares? Then he looked at what he had around him, which wasn’t anything other than a bunch of fucking faggots, queens, and speed freaks, and Andy said, these fucked-up faggots are the center of the world. This is where it’s happening. There’s nothing out there in the real America, where people work for a living, and live in suburbs, and make straight babies and own stupid ugly disgusting cars. The center of the world is here, on 47th Street, in this filthy fucking building filled with these filthy fucking people! It’s the rest of the world that’s outside. And Andy was right. No one has to spend their whole life as a fucking victim! Anyone can change the world. You just decide that you’re what’s hot, you’re the new fabulous thing, and then tell other people. And keep fucking telling them! They’ll laugh at first, because stupid ugly people always laugh at everything, but if you repeat it enough, sooner or later they’re going to come around and they won’t be laughing. Because if there’s anything that’s true, it’s that no one wants to be left out of the party. They’ll ask for invitations. They’ll want drugs. They’ll want to fuck beautiful young boys. And you’ll be the one with the invitations, you’ll be the one with the drugs, and it’ll be your boyfriend they’re trying to slip the tongue. You’ll have all the power. You say yes or no. You decide who makes it and who’s as nasty as old dog food. That’s how you take over the fucking world! It’s the simplest fucking thing. America is the original nightclub. All it takes is time and patience and a good doorman.

  *

  Then there was the time when Adeline graduated from Parsons, earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts. Baby asked if she planned on inviting Suzanne.

  —Mother doesn’t belong here, said Adeline.

  —She pays for everything, said Baby. I can’t think of anything lonelier than not being invited to your daughter’s graduation.

  —Why must you always take her side? asked Adeline.

  —I lived with her for the better part of a year, said Baby.

  Don’t speak to me of Mother.

  When the day did roll around, Adeline didn’t attend the commencement ceremony. She wanted to mark the occasion in her own fashion, deciding that simply the very best way to celebrate would be to eat MDMA and watch a movie. For this outing, she brought along her querulous Russian friend, Minerva. And Baby.

  The latter noted, silently, disgruntled, that Adeline’s disapproval of his friends did not extend to those times when she desired intoxicants. At such moments, the dreadful club folk were pure swellegance.

  Baby scored four tablets of MDMA, giving one each to Adeline and Minerva, eating two himself. Of late, he’d upped his dosage. The cause of increase was this one time when he drank some Ecstasy Punch at Limelight. Party promoters employed this noxious brew as a marketing device, crushing a huge number of tablets into a watery fruit-flavored drink. Distributed for free. Baby ended up with an overload, bringing him to an enlightened understanding regarding the psychic parsimony of eating only one pill. MDMA was not LSD. He need not fear it.

  Despite her lack of familiarity with the television program on which the film was based, Adeline decided they should see Tales from the Darkside: The Movie. She’d read that it starred Debbie Harry, lead singer of the defunct band Blondie. This casting was recommendation enough.

  The film was playing at the Loews 34th Street Showcase. A relatively recent addition to the city, the theater was a squat building with three screens. During Baby’s first few months in New York, he and Adeline had attended a screening at the Showcase of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, projected in glorious 70mm. Baby now had no memory of that film beyond the aging faces of its protagonists and a dim recollection of humpback whales traveling through outer space.

  Playing one of the basement theaters, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie was unusually bad, even by the dubious standards of the horror genre. A portmanteau film, its scant framing story begins with Debbie Harry living the façade of a normal suburban wife. It is revealed that beneath the veneer, Harry is a witch with an eight-year-old boy caged in her kitchen. She plans to host a dinner, going through the trappings of food preparation, with the child intended as the main course.

  She gives the boy a book entitled Tales from the Darkside. Surprised by his disinterest in the tome, she informs the boy that the book was a favorite from her own childhood. Crazed with the desperation of the damned, the child suggests that he read Debbie Harry stories from within the book. She readily assents. Baby couldn’t imagine why she would. The book is hers, she’s been reading it for decades. Why would any of the stories be interesting? Even worse, the child can barely speak. There is no appeal in his elocution.

  Each of the three tales dissolves into its own short narrative film. The first is about a mummy brought to life by career opportunists. The second is about a hitman hired to kill a cat. The third is about a man who witnesses a gargoyle committing murder and then strikes a deal with the creature to avoid his own death.

  The drug disrupted Baby’s ability to follow the narratives in any linear sense. Flashes of images came at random, disjointed. The mummy’s head cut off and burnt in a fire. The smile of the gargoyle. An old man’s face covered in blood. An interracial marriage. Zombies.

  A twist of the old man’s lip, beneath the stage blood, reminded Baby of the time when he’d met Quentin Crisp at Tunnel. Crisp’d written a book called The Naked Civil Servant, a memoir of his life as a flame queen in London around the time of World War II. Through the machinations of fate, he’d ended up as the club scene’s elder statesman.

  Baby and Crisp spoke for the better part of an hour.

  —Do you know, you charming boy, said Crisp, that in the days of Studio 54, the great-grandson of Abraham Lincoln would come up on the train from Virginia to partake in the sheer excess? It’s absolutely true. I’ve had it from multiple sources. His name was Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, but they called him Bud. Bud! Bud Lincoln! Isn’t it charming? He was a terrible old man with a degenerative disease of the muscles that left him quite incapable of walking. He would be wheeled in by some lovely young stud, and then he’d spend the night talking with Liz Taylor and Mick Jagger. They were fascinated. Wouldn’t you be? When the time came to return to his hotel, he’d pick up a coterie of lovely young things. Boys, girls, transvestites, queer, straight. Those distinctions didn’t matter in the slightest to the progeny of Honest Abe. Bud brought them back to his hotel and made them fuck each other silly. He’d only watch, as by this time the poor thing’s flower could no longer bloom. People’ve told me the most outrageous stories about his face, about the drooping geriatric visage that leered and drooled while the nubile bodies cavorted and capered in the arms of Aphrodite. The tired old thing died several years back. It goes to show, doesn’t it, my little one? Even in the best families.

  The film ended. The trio stumbled outside. Minerva, who did not like Baby, pushed off, leaving the roommates with many daylight hours. Adeline was at a complete loss, the MDMA reducing her to a half giggle, enchanted by the empty lot acr
oss the street.

  —Did you like the movie? asked Baby.

  —Oh Baby, said Adeline, I’ll assume it’s your state of mind that’s made you ask such a dreadful question. I thought we had a pact. No obvious questions after a film!

  —Let’s go to Grant’s Tomb, said Baby.

  —Shall we? Where is it?

  —Way uptown, said Baby. We’ll have to go to Penn Station and take the IRT local.

  They rode the 1 up to 125th Street, getting off at the elevated station. As they walked down the long stairwell, Baby experienced dislocation, unable to find the right direction. Drug absurdity. The green trees of Riverside Park were visible, but it took some moments before his brain could issue the cognitive instructions. Adeline was of no help, humming to herself, head tilted upward toward the rusting metal.

  —Oh, wow, she said. It’s so beautiful. It’s man-made, but what if it’s always been here? What if it’s ancient?

  Baby took her hand.

  Like every other open space in the city, Riverside Park was a cluster of homelessness and drug addiction. Some on the nod, others doing the telltale shuffle, one step forward, two steps back.

  The dome of Grant’s Tomb burst through a canopy of trees. Baby and Adeline passed over crumbling granite embedded with the shattered remains of crack vials and broken bottles. Two large eagle statues stood guard on either side of the entrance, their beaks demolished.

  Admission was free. There wasn’t much inside other than a rotunda from which visitors could look down at the sarcophagi of Grant and his wife. A handful of people were visiting, quiet tourists, shell-shocked look in their eyes. They’d come to visit the moldering bones of an American President, the country’s finest nineteenth-century general, and found themselves walking through a park strewn with graffiti and human shit.

  Adeline peered from the gallery at the red porphyry of the sarcophagi, polished, reflecting dull light.

  —Dude, she said, this is, like, the craziest thing, but I can’t read the names. I can only see my own face.

  Ulysses S. Grant, who was incapable of imagining the debasement of his Commander-in-Chief’s great-grandson, an aged man visiting New York to abuse himself among the nubile cocaine-fueled bodies of the twentieth century. We of New York are like space whales of pleasure and debauchery, the cocks and cunts and powders and liquids of unknown vistas. Ulysses S. Grant, eighteenth President of these States United, there is no way that you could imagine to what uses Bud Lincoln would put his famous name. You cannot conceive of Bud Lincoln’s fleshly needs, of Bud Lincoln’s disco nights.

  —Here we are, Adeline said, and I haven’t the slightest about Grant.

  —He was a terrible drunk, said Baby. Why not buy a book from the gift shop?

  —There’s a gift shop? she asked.

  —That rack by the front door, said Baby.

  No books were offered for sale. Adeline purchased several packets of reproduction Confederate currency. A dollar per cluster of counterfeit cash.

  They left the mausoleum, heading north through the park. Adeline opened a package of her faux money, pawing through the bills.

  She handed Baby a hundred-dollar note. His eyes saw the bill in negative, its form without context. A series of engraved lines. Baby couldn’t recognize the patterns of the intended images.

  —What is it? he asked.

  —Pure Southern charm, she said. They put slaves on their currency. It’s three down-home nigras hoein’ cotton.

  —Why isn’t Jon here? asked Baby.

  —Ask the man yourself, said Adeline. I’m sure he’ll offer you an answer that simply fascinates.

  She wandered ahead. How many years since California? Two? When had Baby last been in anything like nature? The bluest sky. The whitest clouds. Grant’s Tomb. Grant, the Great Drunk, the failed President. Grant, who understood human weakness and indulgence and intoxicants. Could it be that he would, in the end, evidence some sympathy for Bud Lincoln? Was it any surprise that his tomb should attract lotus eaters? His body called them, a magnet for the broken and the mad. The secular patron saint of addiction. The secular god of drugs.

  Waves off the building, the dome attuned to the upper stratosphere, shooting energy signals into the outer reaches of space. Hyperkinetic emergences of Ulysses S. Grant and his beloved wife, Julia, the bones of their corpses arranged to amplify transmission of messages to the whales. Visit us, conquer us, enslave us. Take this vile world away. No man or woman is fit. Spare us the knowledge of our own evil. We surrender, we surrender. We are Bobby E. Lee. We surrender.

  —Baby! Come over here at once!

  Adeline stood across the road by a tiny white urn on a pedestal.

  —Read the inscription, she said.

  ERECTED TO THE MEMORY

  OF AN AMIABLE CHILD

  ST. CLAIRE POLLOCK

  DIED 15 JULY 1797

  IN THE FIFTH YEAR OF HIS AGE

  *

  Then there was the time when Christina had her birthday party in the basement at Tunnel. Michael Alig called Baby with an invitation.

  —But why would I go? asked Baby. I don’t even know Christina!

  —Oh, please, said Michael Alig. Who cares? No one can ever know anyone else.

  The scant number of attendees convinced Baby that he’d been wrangled in the hopes of filling out the crowd. The Tunnel basement hadn’t changed. It wasn’t much more than dirty tables and ugly furniture in a space unfit for human habitation.

  Christina, wearing a red dress and stockings, sat under a spotlight. A painting behind her read BEEFEATER. Baby got roaring drunk in the taxi up to 27th Street, sucking down four short dogs in the backseat. As far as he could tell, Christina had agreed to give a performance, singing some songs, and for whatever reason, once the event began, had expressed her total disinterest in doing anything other than sitting and sulking. Nelson Sullivan floated around her, his camera alternating between Christina and the audience.

  People demanded that Christina sing “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” A queen named Hapi Phace was on the microphone, performing a sloppy comedy routine with another queen named Taboo. A birthday cake was brought out. It read: HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRISTIAN.

  An unknown queen whom Baby didn’t recognize took the microphone. Black leather jacket over black dress, black sunglasses, hair dyed cut and shaved post-punk. She claimed that each of Christina’s ass cheeks were tattooed with an M, and that when Christina bent over, her ass spelled MOM. Christina asked the queen how much she wanted to be the next Madonna. Throwing the microphone to the floor, the queen said: —Girl, it’s not that I want to be the next Madonna. I simply am.

  More screams for “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Lady Bunny on the microphone, asking for the song. Christina would not move.

  Baby looked away. When he looked back, Christina had a hammer. Then Keoki took the hammer away. Then Christina asked for the hammer back. The unknown queen brought it over. Everyone started singing happy birthday, while a handful of people yelled at Christina to eat the cake.

  The unknown queen picked up the cake, strutting before Christina. She pushed the cake into Christina’s face. Frosting mashed into her wig, Christina had the hammer, but she wasn’t swinging. Sulking, sitting, the cake dripping off her face. Hammer in her hand. Nelson Sullivan videotaping.

  —How do you like the party? asked Michael Alig. Isn’t it just great? Such drama!

  —I’m not cut out for this, said Baby.

  —Everyone’s only having fun! Don’t be such a nervous Nellie!

  *

  Then there was the time when Michael Alig introduced Baby to his mother, whose European accent made her sound like Christina.

  —Baby, she said, everyone is someone’s baby! Even you, Baby! Michael is my Baby!

  This introduction occurred on the dance floor at Mars. Michael Alig’s mother had flown in fr
om Indiana.

  —Baby, she asked, do you have any nose candy for Mama?

  *

  Then there was the time when Baby and Queen Rex went to a porn shoot in a warehouse near the corner of Ninth Avenue and Little West 12th Street, very close to Nelson Sullivan’s house.

  The interior of the warehouse was in a converted meat processing plant. The pornography was specialty. All bondage, all domination. No sex.

  A red-headed woman, track marks visible. An overweight man disrobing her. One of the production assistants whispered to Baby and Regina that this was the thirteenth installment in a series entitled Hammer of the Witches, after the Malleus Maleficarum, a witch-hunter’s manual published in 1486. The authors, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, describe the utility of employing certain tortures and techniques in determining a suspect’s familiarity with the dark arts. The producers of Hammer of the Witches had modified these methods to less lethal extremes, subjecting their female stars to adapted versions of the same historical indignities.

  Beneath the aging effects of narcotics abuse, the red-headed woman looked about the same age as Adeline. Every four years the city cycled in a new crop of would-be film directors, would-be writers, would-be artists, would-be models, would-be actresses. Baby’d been in New York long enough that he’d begun encountering a second generation of aspirants. There was never any shortage of human flesh, never any shortage of young women and men degrading themselves in the name of commerce or art, never any shortage of dissolution and drug addiction, never any shortage of idiocy or naiveté, never any shortage of raw material for the great grinding gristmill.

  The overweight man applied a modified version of the thumbscrew, then attempted to measure the woman’s buoyancy by dunking her in a tank of water. After several more of these endurance tests, the shoot ended with the determination that the woman was indeed a witch. The production assistant told Baby that they’d burn the actress in post.