In the Shadow of the American Dream

by David Wojnarowicz

  Last Saturday night at Danceteria was the worst ever. Now I’m head busboy and run all three floors helping the other busboys out. Chuck, this great guy who usually gets stuck with the main floor and is now a good friend, we was runnin’ nuts with the crowd breaking stuff up and dropping bottles like those newsreels of bombs floating out the bottoms of airplanes. A pipe in the wimmen’s room burst twice sending cascades of water everywhere. You don’t know what tough means till ya stepped into a crowd of wimmen in a tiny john in a rock club at 3 A.M. with mops and alla them turn around and abuse ya while yer tryin’ ta mop the fuckin’ floods up and some woman’s doing Chaplinesque stumbles with a beer in one hand and a head fulla quaaludes and sayin’ does the bus stop here? Then later we found her in the men’s room calmly discussing an elephant-sized turd draped over the top of the only toilet. We said, Fuck this, man, the salary ain’t that good, and left the rest of the desperate Danceteria boys to deal with it. Then at some point when we both were gonna quit for the twentieth time, Chuck spied these two assholes on the main dance floor throwing each other about the floor, “artfully arranging themselves into living sculptures,” and ran over and kicked the guy square in the ass and said, Git up muthafucka (he’s from Memphis) you ain’t the only person in this joint, and left the guy yellin’ at the top of his hack daniels lungs, He KICKED me he kicked me. Jesus gimme a break …

  Brian’s been ill. Lady Doc told him yesterday he may be the first person in twenty-five years to have rheumatic fever. Test comes back today and we’ll find out thank god it ain’t contagious.

  So this has been my life this past week. Oh yeah, Carole (remember her from Bookies) appeared before me at Danceteria like a vision in leather jacket and crow black hair askin’ for a Heineken. Had a good long talk and we’ll get together sometime in the near future. She’s movin’ into town in two weeks.

  Look, I’m light-headed from no food since last night, gotta run and buy somethin’ to eat before my ears fall off. Good to get yer letters, hope all is well and hello to Lois and Mike and Mona and we gotta get together soon okay? Bye-bye.

  *David describes this story in a monologue, “Boy in a Coffee Shop on Third Avenue,” in The Waterfront Journals.

  August 1980–January 1981

  [No date]

  Down in the piers going towards sunset, the river easing into dusk, times I think I see myself from a distance entering the ribbed garagelike doors of this place from the highway, times I gain a certain distance from myself and wonder why it is these motions are continued, animal sexual energy, the smell of shit and piss becoming overwhelming insofar as everyone uses this joint as an outdoor toilet, getting fucked and letting it loose in some spare corner, rage from months of old sex, stained clothes, and pools of urine. To get past this you have to breathe light and stay near the openings of the walls and walk way back to the end where the walls open out into the river and some concrete platform that rides out a ways and every so often crumbles into the sea. Deep in the back of the mind some of us wish it would all burn down, burn away in some raging torrent of wind and flames, pier walks collapsing and hissing into the waters, somehow setting us all free from past histories of this warehouse, of its once long ago beautiful rooms that permitted live films of Genet and Burroughs to unwind with a stationary kind of silence, something punctuated by breathing alone, and the rustle of shirts and pants sliding, being unbuttoned or folded back. Walking towards the entrance, the sun had gone down behind the Jersey factories leaving just a pale darkness inside the place, figures could appear and disappear, become vacant or nonexistent. Suddenly out of one of the side rooms that once had been a loading dock there was a series of high-pitched hysterical screams and in all of that gathered darkness a figure of light flew out, speed motions of arms and legs pumping, propelling it towards the far wall, blur lines of movement, an abject silence following in the wake of screams, and I immediately thought to myself: stupid queen. For there were times in the past when drag queens, weary of the lonesomeness amidst all this blatant standing in doorways, made clinical comments on the muffled sounds of interlocked limbs. But this time the figure stood in dim light holding one hand to his neck and shaking. Several guys and myself rushed over.

  There’s a guy in there with a knife. He cut me, he said, turning his head to the side, exposing a long red wound on pale white skin. I turned blindly, rushed along the floor till I found a door that had been ripped off its hinges, and tugged like a madman at a two-by-four that had been nailed into its surface: a great roar as the nails pulled out. I rushed with it into the side room looking for the man. The kid had described him: black hair, white guy, mechanic’s overalls and blue windbreaker. He said, I thought something was strange about him, like he didn’t seem too interested in getting it on, at least not near other people. I had second thoughts, but unfortunately I was too attracted to listen to them. I felt him cut me, and I pushed him away and started running and screaming. There are several small enclosures in the loading dock area; some guy poked his hand through the windows and flicked a lighter while I covered the doorways ready to bash the guy’s head if he came running out.

  [No date]

  Things change when the air changes: that’s a statement uttered by some homeless Joe a long time ago, almost a year, when Brian and I first moved into Vinegar Hill. So here it is, I’m sitting in an apartment on 2nd Avenue in the East Village. Second night I’ve slept here. There’s a dog that pisses on everything and tears apart the faded couch cushions and digs to China through the soft stuffing sitting in a chair opposite me watching the clockwork characters’ movements, tiny and unattainable on the cobblestone streets below. First time in years when everything is up in the air. I’m unsure of work and it seems a lot of people’s lives are on the line, all of them either sleeping or waking across the city right now. The Club was busted last Saturday night. I was coming up from the basement with two water pitchers in my hand. George, the jerk who stands at the exit door, wasn’t there. I remember feeling perplexed and wondering where the fuck he’d gone. Looked around the crowded main floor as I stepped through the door, I caught sight of him as he skulked away with a wounded animal look on his stupid face. He looked right at me but kept on walking. As I crossed the floor with the empty pitchers in my hand to the main floor bar Carol Black ran by right behind me, grabbed me by the shoulder, and said, Cops are here! and continued on. I shook off that image, thinking it was just like the firemen’s visit, they’d look around and then split. As I reached the main floor bar, I saw this big beefy detective in a brown suit and striped tie like Alfred Hitchcock standing behind the bar. Behind him, Barbara had a worried look on her face. I reached for the water/mixer hose and a fat cop snapped, Bar’s closed! I gave him a disgusted look, waved him away and reached over, grabbed the spigot, and started filling the pitchers. He slammed my hand away and yelled something unintelligible, and I backed away in confusion. Something was happening. I walked around towards the front ticket booth and saw Michael Parker and Lolo and about seven others shoved into the ticket booth illuminated in all that darkness of the hall with fluorescent lights. Others were along the wall. Dick was rushing around. I turned and rushed downstairs, people still dancing and DJ’s putting on records like normal. Went over to the bar where Max Blagg and Tim were and leaned over the bar and said, Tim, there’s something really weird going on upstairs. Call Max over. Max! There’s something going on upstairs. The cops are here, and they got all these people lined up behind the ticket booth with their hands in the air. No sooner had I finished than a hand latched onto my shoulder and spun me around. It was some beefy dick and he held me for a second and stared into my eyes. Then he pushed me away and was joined by a second cop. The first one bent low to go under the counter of the bar but banged his head ’cause there was no opening there. He stood back up and the second cop helped him over the counter. He handcuffed Tim and Max. I was shocked and backed up slowly into the crowd, stood back as they led him out and up the stairs. Upstairs Carol Black g
rabbed onto me and told me to sit down along the wall like one of the customers. It was clear that anyone working there was being arrested. When the cops were arresting Max I remember looking for a fire extinguisher with the thought in mind of firing it on the cops: these fantastic ideas of creating confusion, setting people free. I stood back and watched him and Tim be led up the stairs to the main floor, following minutes later. Tried to push through the confused crowd to the mezzanine in order to see what was happening to Brian and the others up there. But the cops had gone up before me and were in the process of shoving customers down the stairway to clear the upper floor. Wandering around the main floor, customers yelling for drinks: I just bought drink tickets! Cops punching people around, arresting some momentarily, letting them go minutes later if they did not work in the club. Carol Black grabbed me and pulled me to the side: Pretend you’re a customer. We sat down on a side bench, my arm around her shoulder, hers around my waist, talking in undertones to try and make sense of the confusion. Finally cops began clearing customers from the club, threatening them with arrest if they stayed behind. We waited until it was no longer safe to stay and slowly walked out in the last lines of the crowd. Saw seven or more people in the front ticket booth under sickening fluorescent light—a couple with faces bloodied—all with hands in the air looking frightened. Lolo looked at us and moved his lips, Leave, leave, nodding towards the exit.

  January 21, 1981

  Reagan is the president of this country now. What more or less do we need …

  I haven’t moved to put words down in here in ages, going through a time in my life that seems desperate, surreal, awful, and slightly wondrous, all simultaneously. Met a fellow a month or so ago—Peter Hujar—a photographer who in some interesting ways is like a mirror of scenes I’m entering or have entered. When I talk to him or vice versa, it’s like seeing senses unravel that are almost the same, separated by social class or money or something like age attitude. I still have hope in my life somehow. He has the same desperate and at times confused outlook but minus that one seed of hope—a kind of hope or desire that could be bogus or real, but nevertheless I have in me and which helps me ignore the difficult things that surround me, or at least lets me see them as transitory with some future point in store that will absolve me of all this searching or desire or confusion.

  New York City

  September 1, 1981

  I’m sitting in the park up on 15th Street, long after the sun’s gone down. I’m sitting there in the darkness under some trees on a bench and this seedy red-haired man in a cheap business suit suddenly walks over and slides onto the bench next to me, simultaneously mumbling something. It sounded like, How does an egg come out? He said it quick, fumbled his dirty hands against each other, quick nervous pats to the hair sweeping around the sides of his ears. I was disturbed by the way he moved up and sat down. I’d been looking at this young guy sitting over on a railing: the young guy was watching the two of us, me and this seedy guy, wondering if we were making contact.

  I had no patience: What did you say?

  Uh … how does one come out?

  I felt thoroughly disgusted. The guy had some hideous skin rash, greasy temples. He wouldn’t look at me, just stared straight ahead as he talked, his hands like two small bird wings, long nails, clattering against one another. I looked at him hard and snapped, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  He flinched slightly. You don’t know what I’m talking about? How does one come out? How does one go about doing what those guys over there are doing (he motioned towards the park hut where in the leafy shadows I could make out the forms of a series of men in various leaning positions). I mean, I never did it before. I don’t know how … I wish I could find someone to teach me …

  Don’t worry about it. It comes natural …

  Yeah, but how do you meet someone? How do you approach someone, like how did those guys start to do it?

  Oh they probably know each other, I said dryly.

  He fiddled with his hands some more, and then his voice dropped two octaves, and he said huskily, Uh … do you want to get to know me?

  No.

  He sat there for a few minutes staring straight ahead and nodding every couple of seconds like he was digesting the information, then got up and walked away quickly.

  I looked towards the railing where the young guy had been sitting and saw that he was talking to some other guy who’d approached him from the pathway. The guy who approached him was large and muscular, handsome in a way, wearing black cowboy boots that clicked as he stepped and shifted back and forth, laughing over some unheard thing, rubbing his hands and then reaching out and putting his hand on the side of the young guy’s face, almost caressing it, but the young guy pulled back slightly. A blond man who’d once been overweight and this year had a new body, wearing a tan bodysuit beneath his white trousers, stepped over to me and began with, I know you don’t remember me, but we met once before …

  I got up and started walking, walked around under the lampposts along the Avenue side of the park past a bench where two boys sat, one in the other’s arms lying on his back, a slow breeze flowing and the other guy stroking the sides of his head, around the temples, with long white fingers. He said, I wonder what the red sky means. I looked up and the sky had a red pale glow on the bellies of clouds. It was getting towards dawn.

  I crossed the street at the center intersection and entered the east park. The regulars were sitting over on the side: these characters take over a few picnic benches and play some sort of card games until all hours of the morning. In the grassy sections of the park behind iron railings were men and women sleeping beneath dark covers.

  I went back into the west section and suddenly felt very weary. I hadn’t planned on meeting anyone but then I saw this young guy who seemed pretty interesting. He was attractive because he had a complete sense of himself. He was unhurried, sitting back on the rail in the shadows, cool black hair, looking around. I walked over by him, and he looked back at me. I passed him and sat down on a bench nearby, staring at the distances of the park, through the cool leaves, wind, empty benches, and lampposts, losing myself. I wanted to talk to him but felt tired and didn’t know if I could handle lying down with anyone. But the idea of walking away and maybe never seeing him again made me stand up, turn slowly in the breeze, and look around at him. He had his head turned but it moved back towards me, and I ended up turning away again, walking a few feet towards the bushes, turning and walking back to the bench, sitting again and standing back up again. I felt absurd, tired, anxious. He kept looking at me. I realized that if I left the park without speaking to him, he might feel I wasn’t interested, and at any time after that night if I saw him again he probably wouldn’t try to speak with me. I walked past him a second time, felt absurd again, turned back slowly and walked over to him.

  How’s it going?

  Fine, fine, he said smiling. It was one of the most charming smiles I had ever had made towards me. With a flash of white teeth—he was roughly handsome, smooth skin—he reminded me of someone I’d seen in my past, a guy years ago when I was getting on a train somewhere in the dusk of the city, a face among the crowds in the station, someone I never forgot. I sat down next to him, and we talked for a while about the things that we did. He was a photographer. I’d seen some of his things in a weekly paper and one or two books. I felt strange, not from knowing some of his work, but because he was so attractive to me. It wasn’t just physical, it was a kind of excitement I felt realizing the distances one has traveled. I listened to his speech; he had a slow grace about him, contained, humorous, no harsh visions of life. His hands, his head and speech moved slowly like he was vaguely stoned but very clear. At some point we left the park and walked down to the Kiev restaurant for coffee. And sitting in the back against the wall we made slow sparse conversation. I knew I wanted to lie down with him but nothing was mentioned. I wondered how it would be approached, if at all. What words, what gestures.

&
nbsp; When we left the restaurant I asked him if he was a little stoned and he laughed and said, Everybody asks me that. No. I laughed and apologized, feeling a little embarrassed. I asked him where he lived and he said 12th Street, and I told him I’d walk him part of the way. We headed west down the street glittering with lamps and pools of broken glass an emptiness in the dark air, a taxi in the distance bouncing over a hole in the street, the sound echoing.

  On the way up Broadway we passed the church around 11th Street, which has a front yard with a large urn the size of four men side by side and dark green lawns and some trees and flowers that had recently lost their petals. The entire yard was bathed in night shadows but over the roofs and spires the sky was turning a deep cobalt. I turned to him and said, I haven’t lain down on grass in ages … We stopped and rested our hands on the wroughtiron fence, white against gleaming black. Then I said, There’s too much dog shit in the parks to lay down.

  He didn’t say anything, but turned and walked over to the gate and reached over touching the latch. It was open. He unhooked it and the gate swung open, and he turned to me and smiled. We stepped inside on the asphalt path and walked along it and then he stepped onto the grass and lay down on his back stretching his arms. I smiled and lay out next to him, the face of the buildings whose yard we were in joined the church, was part of the same architecture but had little shades half-rolled down the windows, some gauzy white curtains, and darkness behind them. I wondered if there were nuns and priests sleeping in well-tucked beds, I thought of clean white sheets, little bed stands with wire-rimmed glasses and handkerchiefs and beads and little plastic saints and angels like those on Avenue D dashboards. We lay there for some slow minutes with our hands beneath our heads staring up: large mobile clouds with reddish tinge to their bellies and the jigsaw sections of turquoise sky behind them, shuttering for moments until they were once again covered, one spire way up catching the gradually warming light of dawn way east of the river and tenements. The yard was still filled with a descending night, like some old Magritte scene. He reached over and touched my arm and I touched back, sliding my hand in between the buttons of his shirt and feeling his smooth belly, muscular and warm. Very warm. He turned on his side half-facing me and I climbed up over him, half on him, nuzzling my mouth against his warm neck, the palm of my hand so perfectly formed to the curve of his head, the soft black hair against my fingers. We kissed as the yard slowly turned light and a bus roared by. I felt very happy quite suddenly, like some chord had been touched, something that I hadn’t been aware of needing was just at that moment fulfilled. We lay there in an embrace, not saying anything. It was cool quiet, the occasional sounds of a faraway city, the wet tips of grass and the warmth of him through his clothes. At some point a couple of bums walked by and I heard one yell, Hey you homos … get outta there. We released each other and lay there, one of my arms curved over his chest, and watched the air for a while finally rising from the ground and walking about looking for a place that still contained the night. Nothing. We looked in windows and saw a desk with envelopes and papers on it. He said it was a beautiful garden as we turned around to leave.