by Jarett Kobek
I stumbled around, looking for Queen Rex. I couldn’t remember if I’d come with her. I couldn’t recognize anyone. Everyone’s faces were melting. Whenever I attempted conversation, no words came out of my mouth, or theirs, only the sounds of a thumping techno beat.
—Thump, thump, thump.
—Thump, thump, thump.
—Thump, thump, thump.
—Thump, thump, thump.
—Thump, thump, thump.
I quit Limelight’s cloistered atmosphere for the streets. The cars blurred into a solid state streak of traffic. Light and paint smearing above the pavement. Buildings swayed into each other, charcoal messes of breathing matter.
I must have started walking, because I stood on the far side of the West Side Highway, looking over the water at the green hills of New Jersey. There wasn’t another soul present. I saw the sky, the slow liquid motion of the heavens, the stars smudging across the sky, as if it were me dislodged in time, as if I were Boaz ben-Haim and could see the twelve evening hours as simultaneous events.
—Thump thump, I said, thump thump thump?
Fog rolled off the river, thick tepid tapestry. The piers from the ocean, the streets from the buildings, the buildings from the cars. One gray mesh layer, one impossible situation. I’d done bad drugs, I’d done good drugs, but I’d never done a drug like this. The faux-ketamine had boosted my intelligence, giving my brain a massive spike in capacity. For me, the point of drugs was getting fucked up, dimming the controller, not enhancing its perceptual faculties, not being so transformed that I lost any sense of matter. There was a reason why I hadn’t done DMT.
A sound came down, a sound like an air horn, a sound like buildings collapsing, a sound like the cries of a banshee announcing the death of a family, a sound like a Greek chorus of dogs heralding their owner’s tragedy. The fog parted, a pathway made through the middle, and walking toward me, I swear, was a solitary figure of unknown proportions.
I trembled.
And then it closed upon me. A frail man, five feet eleven inches in height, wearing an Andy Warhol wig. Only another person who thought that if they dressed up like Andy, then they could be Andy.
—Oh, gee, said the Andy, what are you doing here?
—Bad drugs, I said.
—That’s tough, said the Andy. I knew a lot of people who took bad drugs. Most are dead. Some took too much. Some took too little. The rest committed suicide. One girl was hit by a car. It was so sad.
—Who are you? I asked.
—You know who I am.
The Andy took off his black leather jacket. Andy lifted his black turtleneck, revealing the tortured area where Valerie Solanas had fired .32 caliber slugs into his exploding plastic inevitable torso.
—That’s the best makeup I’ve ever seen, I said.
—It isn’t makeup, said Andy.
He took my hand. He put my fingers inside the bullet hole. My fingers sank into his body, warmed by his inner flesh.
—Don’t look surprised, Andy Warhol said. I came back before, after Valerie murdered me. If death couldn’t stop me then, why would it now?
—Angel told me it was ketamine, I said. Are you a ghost?
—I’m much worse than a ghost, he said. You know what the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite says, don’t you? You can’t define what I am, only what I’m not. Lots of kids know that I’m going to live forever and they haven’t even seen me. You only believe because I’m here before you. All those people have a faith that you don’t. Isn’t it terrific when people believe in you? Isn’t it great when they love you?
—I don’t believe in anything, I said. I don’t love anyone.
—Gee, said Andy, that’s too bad.
*
Blame the drugs or the writing or the drugged writing. The next night, at Tunnel, I found some kids who’d bought ketamine from Angel, and asked if they’d had similar experiences. They hadn’t. His ketamine was fine, they said. What was wrong with it?
I called Angel at his number and at Michael’s, but no one answered. I didn’t bother leaving a message on Michael’s machine.
I found Franklin in the Tunnel basement. I suggested we amscray back to my apartment and do the things that people do when they’re desperate for a flickering glimpse of intimacy. He said that he’d rather stay at the club. I reminded him that he hadn’t checked on The King of France for over a month, and wouldn’t it be nice to see the little guy before he wasn’t a kitten anymore?
We abandoned Tunnel. Walking back to my place, I kept thinking about Andy fucking Warhol. He’d always been a sore spot, dying a few months after my arrival in Manhattan and long before I’d joined the Downtown scene. He’d haunted my years in New York, his influence lingering over every aspect of my life.
His death caused a vacuum, and then there was this evil creature Michael Alig, desperate and salivating, muscling his way into the lights and glamour. For over twenty years, those lights and that glamour were Andy’s, he was the beacon for America’s fucked-up and alienated and gay kids. He transformed himself into a living idea like a Tibetan tulpa, an image that self-replicated across the whole culture. But the thing about Andy, the inexplicable thing, is that in addition to being a media superstar, he was the greatest American artist of the twentieth century. I’ll defend that opinion till the death. No one was better.
Someone like Michael, or the thousands of kids who came to New York each year to throw away their lives on the fable of the Silver Factory, assumed the outward form of Andy without having an ounce of his talent.
One of life’s cruel facts. Talent floats you in ways that are incomprehensible to the untalented.
Ability was Andy’s foundation, the bedrock on which he built everything else. When Edie was vomiting up bile, when Ondine was shooting speed into his own eyeball, when Billy Name trapped himself within a bathroom hermitage, there was the underlying stability of talent. A talent that could survive anything. A talent that could survive being shot. A talent that could survive death. A talent that could survive the 1970s.
Franklin and I got to my apartment. I took off his clothes. Then I took off my clothes. Then I screwed his brains out. Then we hung around, naked, for hours, playing with The King of France.
—Aren’t you so glad you adopted this little guy? He’s the cutest!
—It’s probably the best thing that I’ve done with my life, I said. Whenever I imagine his kitten face in a trash can, rotten food on his head, I know that I’ve done something genuinely good.
The King of France enjoyed chasing change. I’d throw my nickels and dimes and pennies and quarters around the apartment, and he’d run after them, often leading to the spectacle of the fellow trotting around with silver currency dangling from his mouth. At any given time, my floor was littered with roughly thirty dollars in coins.
We were throwing quarters when someone knocked on my door. I heard a man and a woman giggling.
—What fucking time is it? I asked.
—Two in the morning, said Franklin.
More knocking. The woman’s shrill laughter even louder.
—This building. These people must have the wrong floor, I said. Straight people can be so fucking annoying. I’m not putting on any clothes. If these people are so rude that they’d knock on a stranger’s door in the early am hours, then they deserve the poet in his naked glory.
I opened the door. There stood Cecil and Karen Spencer. They’d lived through the East Village arts scene, sure, but it hadn’t prepared them for the glory of my nudity, for a sudden dewy explosion of the uncircumcised human form.
I should have moved into the hallway and closed the door behind me. Instead I stood there, waiting for them to say something, waiting for them to get over the abrupt frankness of my Hellenic neo-paganism, none of us saying anything until Franklin walked up behind me, himself stark naked, his cock half erect
. He put his arms on my shoulders and nuzzled into my neck.
—Hi, he said. I’m Franklin. Who’re you?
—I guess I’m not the only person who lives in a soap opera, said Karen Spencer.
*
I tried pacifying Cecil, calming him and reassuring him, blaming myself, talking about how much he meant. His need was obvious. He wanted me to fight for him. He wanted a grand show, a pantomime to convince him that it was okay to forgive me. But I didn’t have the energy. I let him slide. I let it pass.
It’s taken me years to admit it, but it was a shame. Cecil would have forgiven me anything. If I hadn’t fucked it up, he would be sitting behind me now, typing on his computer, happy as a clam.
Franklin didn’t give a shit one way or the other.
And me?
The only thing I cared about was the writing.
JUNE 1994
Baby Turns In His Manuscript
I finished the manuscript, finished my revisions. I typed the title page:
SAVING ANNE FRANK
I put the manuscript on Parker’s desk. He reached out with his thick ham hands. He read the title.
—You’re fucking killing me with this, he said. How the hell am I going to make this right with Bill Thomas?
—We have a signed contract.
—Big whoop.
—Read it. Tell me what you think.
Happy to be rid of the manuscript, happy to be done with the absolute depths of human darkness, I wandered from Parker’s office and ended up in Central Park, a locale that I generally avoided, ancient obelisks notwithstanding.
I walked through Sheep Meadow and across West Drive. A large pedestaled statue stood in a leafy grove, dedicated to the memory of the New York 7th Regiment, a Civil War unit. It depicted an infantryman as standing sentry, leaning on his rifle. Scattered around its base were a bunch of old chicken bones.
It’s an idealized portrait but I recognized the face. The simple, dumb American face. A face that I’d grown up with, a face that had died hundreds of thousands of times because half of the country could not admit the evils of slavery. I’d spent half a year working on a manuscript, a year that I could have spent living, and soon I’d be gone, too, as dead as the 7th Regiment. Those who escaped battle had gone with old age, or with disease, or with accident. There was no way out. Everyone turned to dust. Why had I even bothered?
I had a sensation that the Civil War hadn’t ended. That our world lay atop the true, older reality. We were doomed to fight out the same battles. Look at American politics. The schism has always been the same. North versus South. White versus Black. Over two hundred years of the Republic and nothing had changed. The battle went ever on, would go on long after my death, long after my books were forgotten.
As I looked into that stupid American face, I thought, Oh, fuck, this could be a really good book. This could be great. I was back on the treadmill, the never-ending march of literature.
Oh, Ulysses S. Grant, you patron secular saint of addiction, how I wished you would deliver me. How I wanted a drink! I stopped at a tourist bar near the Empire State Building and downed a series of vodka sodas.
Back at my apartment, my answering machine held three messages. All from Parker.
—You miserable piece of shit, said the machine, you had better pull your dick from whatever hole in which it’s stationed and ring me as soon as you get this. I’m not fucking around, you weak sister.
He answered the phone. He too had gone into the realm of the drunkard. His voice too was thick with demon alcohol.
—Parker, I said, it’s Baby.
—You son of a bitch, he said. You fucking goofball queer.
—Do you hate it? I asked.
—A fat girl with a bad weave in yellow snake skin shoes and red pants. That used to be my vision of god. But now I know that god is your manuscript. I want to dress it up, name it Susan and propose blissful and fiscally rewarding matrimony. I want my dick between the pages, evenly distributed on both sides. I want to ride it. This is hot shit, kiddo. I can sell this like water to a ragheaded sonofabitch who’s dying from thirst in the Saudi desert.
—So everything’s copacetic? I asked.
—Things are beyond copacetic, you poof, said Parker. I had a girlfriend who couldn’t pronounce epitome. She kept calling it epi-tome. Like some crazy Greek fuckbook. Things aren’t the epitome of copacetic. They’re the fucking epi-tome. We’re set and ready to go.
—All right, I said. I’m deliriously drunk and I need to feed my cat.
—I’ll call you tomorrow, he said. They’re gonna kill us for this, but it’ll be such a glorious fucking death.
I took The King of France into my lap. He flopped on his back, showing me his snowy gut. Having never had a mother, and being exiled from his siblings, the kitten had never learned any normal cat behaviors. He didn’t enjoy being pet, but he loved being slapped on his stomach.
He purred as hard as I’d ever heard. The weakness of alcohol came upon my body. I felt so fucking lonely. I’d made it as an author, I’d gotten where I’d wanted, but in the end, I didn’t have anybody. I’d fucked up my friendships, fucked up my love life. The best that I had was Franklin. Back to that dead awful sensation of my first day in New York, the complete and absolute freedom of having no human attachments. I’d escaped the American Middle West and it still felt awful. I was a member of the 7th Regiment, stationed at Petersburg, hoping not to die.
I called Franklin.
AUGUST 1994
Reunion
I’d been listening to Dion and the Belmonts. My favorite song was “Little Diane,” an up-tempo number with very dark lyrics about Dion wanting revenge upon a two-timing woman, but also admitting that his desire for vengeance is the only mask that can suppress his pain. The song’s unique feature comes in its instrumentation, with a kazoo as the lead instrument. You’d think that this would kill the song, but somehow a child’s toy gives it an ultra-modern sound.
The Greatest Hits of Dion and the Belmonts was one of the first CDs that I’d purchased. I’d given over to the new technology, liking the clarity of sound and the smallness of the individual unit. I didn’t own many LPs, but whenever I moved them, it was like carrying a solid ton of material.
While writing Saving Anne Frank, I’d bought a six-disc changer so that I could listen to solid hours of music. I’d never been particularly interested in music, even as a devotee of the club, an environment in which you were supposed to have favorite DJs and all this other unmemorable crap, but I had discovered one kind of music that I truly loved. Old pop and soul from the 1950s and 1960s. This material was being re-released on CD, so I was spending every Saturday down in the Village, digging through the racks.
Then there was the time when I was thinking about Sam Cooke. Unable to get “That’s Where It’s At” out of my head, I went to Bleecker Bob’s with the hope of finding more material. I came across an import of a Japanese CD, Live at the Harlem Club, 1963. I’m not big on live recordings, and it was pricey because it was from Nippon. But what the hell, I said, it’s Sam Cooke. If you can’t trust Sam Cooke to be good, is there anything you can trust?
Sam Cooke is always good. “Bring It On Home to Me” was my favorite song. It’s the best song ever recorded. And the saddest.
The young man behind the register, who looked as if he’d made a habit out of avoiding sex, gave me the once-over. He couldn’t believe that some swish guy in gross clothes with an obvious yuppie attitude had enough taste to buy this album. I could hear the question that he wanted to ask: Are you sure you don’t want some Pearl Jam?
I’d changed, I’d evolved past the Village, evolved past record store clerks. I was something else.
Still, I always loved the NYU stomping grounds. On MacDougal, I drank an iced espresso in Caffè Reggio, sitting in the alcove by the bathroom. Beneath a cheap bust of Ne
fertiti. I’d brought a book. A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. I read about 100 pages, going blind from the titular character’s dialogue, which appears IN ALL CAPITALS. Other than this typographical oddity, I liked the novel just fine. I liked everything by John Irving.
I walked through the park, passing the homeless guys playing ultra-abusive games of chess. There were more drug dealers than I remembered. Each said the same thing. Smoke, smoke, smoke.
One of New York City’s great mysteries is the fountain in Washington Square. You can never predict when it’ll be turned on. As I moved toward the center of the park, I could see the water blasting skyward. It was one of the lucky days.
A crowd had formed around the pool. Half-naked teenage girls sat on the upper ring, their feet dangling into the water. Parents let their infant children splash around. A guy played an out-of-tune guitar and sang off-key.
I watched for a little while. Then I heard a girl calling my name.
—Baby Baby Baby!
I shuddered inside, not wanting to deal with a club person in the blinding clarity of late-summer sunlight. But what could I do? I turned. And there she was. And there she was. And there she was. And. there. she. was.
Adeline.
—Adeline? I said.
—Baby, she said.
We hugged. I held her too long. She tried squirming out of my arms. I wouldn’t let her go. She’d put on weight. She didn’t feel like a skeleton.
—Baby, she said, please. I can’t breathe.
—If I let you go, are you going to run away? I asked.
—You’ll remember that I’m the one who called you.
I let her go. Her face was red. She took in a deep breath.
—I don’t come to the park very often, I said. I live up in the mid-30s.
—I started making my appearance only a few weeks ago, she said. It’s a pleasant enough exercise. One does what one can to stave off boredom.
