Boys Keep Swinging

by Jake Shears

  I guess he sometimes worked as a waiter at Republic, a restaurant on Union Square, but he was usually at home smoking pot. We talked one day about his plans for the place, and he told me he was going to suspend his bed over an enclosed area of water in his bedroom. I nodded and said, “Wow, that sounds really amazing.” He was kind of a tool.

  One day, soon after moving in, I was on a ladder painting my walls when a weathered but handsome man in his thirties strolled into my room, finishing a loud conversation on a cell phone. He wore a ponytail and a black trench coat and carried a brown cardboard box under his arm. “Hello!” he said, dropping it and stepping forward with a manic grin, his arms outstretched. I came down from the ladder. “I’ve been waiting to meet you, man!” He slapped me on the back and pulled me into a huge hug. “Welcome to the pad, dude.” He lit a cigarette and paced in a circle, checking my room out. “Lookin’ really good in here, bud. Really good. I’m telling ya, this is great. Ah, what a treat that you’re here. Just what this place needs. You in school?”

  I nodded.

  “This is gonna be so great for you, man.” He grabbed my hand and shook it vigorously. “Donavan! But my parents almost named me Chase. Chase/Jason, so close, right? It’s a sign, dude. Something’s up. When I’m right, I’m right.” He clapped his hands. Despite his intense energy, I was just pleased that he was friendly. If I have to live with somebody, Jesus, just let them be friendly. I asked him what was in the box.

  “Ah, dude, it’s this crazy bowl I just got from the Middle East. It’s a doozy, gonna put it in the shop tomorrow.”

  “What’s the shop?”

  He told me he ran a stall in this antique market in SoHo. He led me to his room, cigarette crushed between his lips, and left his box sitting on the floor. He opened his door and revealed a room the exact size and shape of mine, also with a dirt-caked window at the end. It looked like a Moroccan opium den. There was a plethora of plants hanging from the ceiling and rough-edged rugs and mats on the floor. Lacquered vases rose up from behind chairs and desks, holding knickknacks and ashtrays, a fine layer of dust over every surface. The bed on the floor was unmade, the maroon sheets having seen some kind of tussle. A scrawl on the wall in black Sharpie above the bed read, THE SEER IS UPRISING—AFRICA. He stuck a long, ornate silver pipe in my face. “Want some weed?” I took his lighter and obliged.

  Donavan seemed to be thinking faster than he could speak. “So you’re from Seattle? Ah, I’ve been there a couple times, great place. Wow, man, what a scene. You ever been to Chicago? It’s just wild. Frankie Knuckles played my birthday party. My ex-wife lives there. We’re still friends, you know. She’s so great, you have to meet her. Was that a PlayStation I saw in your room? I played Final Fantasy Seven for like ninety hours. You ever been to India? Man, that’s where you need to go. It’s insane. You can live like a king for ten bucks a day. Ten bucks! A king! Hey, you want these shelves here? I’m not doing anything with them. I have too many for my stall.” He gestured to a stack of glass sheets in a corner. This was perfect, because I had nothing to put my books or my turntable on.

  Donavan was dialed to an intense frequency but always seemed genuinely happy to see me. His life seemed shifty, and I never quite got a grip on his story. But it sounded like there’d been some drug problems. “Heroin, man. Never touch the stuff. It’s the devil.” But he loved his weed, and I wondered if he wasn’t on some kind of speed half the time, with his frenetic babbling. He was like a tumbling coffee mug, spilling so fast and catching itself upright after it’s made a full turn.

  I frequented the Hasidic warehouses that dotted the neighborhood—big, dark, sprawling caves with furniture and junk piled to the ceiling. In these hoards I found pieces, like bits of a puzzle, that might complete my room. I walked out of these damp lairs with my hands covered in a sticky film, a rusted lamp or a pleather footrest in my arms. The men who ran these places were gruff and I was too nervous to haggle with them, so I had to decide, on the spot, whether what I wanted was worth the price they tossed me.

  There was this kind of office-supply shop a few blocks away, and I found an L-shaped desk for about a hundred bucks. Everything I purchased seemed to be impossibly heavy. I got a dolly and brought the desk home in two separate trips. It looked metallic and officious in my room. The size of it actually helped fill in some of the space, but as my room started to come together I thought, There’s no way in hell I’m ever gonna be able to get this shit out of here.

  I couldn’t afford to buy CDs at the moment, but I did have the spare change to dig through the piles of dusty old records that sat in darkened corners of the warehouses. I swept up anything that looked interesting, paying about a dollar for each record. I found Olivia Newton-John, the Bee Gees’ early albums, a scratched-up Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John. I took a chance on anything that looked remotely fun. There was a remarkable yet awful record from 1978 by Carolyne Bernier that I found myself playing on repeat. It had a nearly seventeen-minute-long song called “Secret Agent Love.” I took the sleeve and made a spot for it on the wall. The photo was of a blond Carolyne Bernier, sporting a black chiffon blouse and a feathered hairdo. English was definitely not her first language or forte and she had some pitch issues, but whatever, it was delightful. I found a record by Tuxedo Junction, with “Chattanooga Choo Choo” on it. I knew this stuff was supposed to be terrible, but I loved it. I lay on my frigid red carpet and dreamed about “over-it”-looking women with glossy lips, half-assedly going along with the band, star filters all around their faces. My roommates and friends tried their best to be nice and hide their horror when I played these albums. It may not have been the latest or the coolest, but at least I had some damn music.

  I did manage to scrape enough money together to buy a CD that had just come out: Beck’s Midnite Vultures. I heard it in its entirety for the first time at one of Lucy’s cocktail parties, staring wordlessly at the stereo, forgetting any social niceties, too wrapped up in the squonking horns and absurd lyrics. My Beck fandom had started in early high school and I had cherished each album. But this was something else, a whole world in a box, populated by shady pimps, women named Debra, screaming lesbians. The critics weren’t especially fond of it, but I felt like it had been made just for me. This was somebody not just being an artist; it was the sound of somebody having a good time. That album, more than anything else, instilled a desire in me to create something that made people feel the same way I did each time I listened to it.

  I WAS STILL HANGING WITH Gavin some, our housing split not having ended our friendship. It was around this time we started going to the Cock, a bar on Twelfth Street and Avenue A. It had been there for a year or so already and I’d heard a few people praise it for being a godsend, a tribute to a bygone New York. It was apparently one of the main places to hang these days, and right away I could feel its allure. It was bringing gay sex back at the end of a decade that had made it something people feared—something that was dangerous and made people sick.

  We’d usually get there early, and there weren’t many people, just a few guys kicked back on the banquette, drinking. The Cock was a small room divided into three sections: the bar, which was painted black with a red-glitter countertop; a red-vinyl-banquette area next to a go-go stand in front of a curtain visible to most of the room; and, behind the curtain, a dark room. Every surface, including the lacquered bar, was covered with a muted sparkle, as if someone had wiped the whole thing down with bejeweled lube. This particular night, there was an androgynous man with upswept blond hair DJing some Iggy, Blondie, and the Runaways. Later, I’d find out that it was Miss Guy, lead singer of the Toilet Böys.

  The first night I was there I saw two signs. One was very large and dominated the back of the room: NO DANCING. To the left of it there was a smaller one: WATCH YOUR WALLET.

  A man who introduced himself as a music producer named Larry Tee was wandering around in thick black glasses and an oversize white shirt. He informed me that the sign was there
because of something called the cabaret law. I shrugged, not having heard of it. “Means you have to have a license for people to dance. It’s all Giuliani,” he said. “He’s been the worst mayor. It’s so fucked-up. People used to be able to do whatever they wanted.” He laughed. “Well, good luck. You can’t stop the gays from partying.”

  I was shocked. No dancing? What. The. Fuck. I’d never heard of such a thing. This was a living Footloose, the sign like something out of 1984. How could you tell people not to dance? Apparently the police were raiding the Cock pretty regularly, not something they normally did with straight bars. (But I guess straight people weren’t having sex in the back of their establishments.) The cops would storm in, turn the music off and all the lights on, and search everybody for drugs, always making a few arrests. I’m glad I was never there for one. It would have scared the crap out of me.

  As the evening got busier, men crammed up against one another, all messy hands and playful shoving. Friends would be lost to the swell, “Back in the New York Groove” playing. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke and the dancers’ musk. A mammoth man would be on the bar, his banana sling cradling a bulge so big it looked like it could knock somebody out with a light thwack. Below him were guys reaching to touch it, sticking dollars in the elastic. He’d whip his dick out every once in a while and let somebody stick it in their mouth. I’ve never been big on participating in public displays of sex; I have nothing against it, though, since I’m always happy to see debauched behavior. There’s something kind of sweet about people feeling free enough to do whatever they want in plain sight.

  I found flyers around town for an event called Kurfew, “America’s Largest YOUNG Gay Dance Party!” It supposedly catered to the under-twenty-one crowd, and seeing that I was still twenty, I thought I would give it a shot. The flyers every week had images of sleek, twinky boys preening under neon lights. It was being held at Tunnel, in the Kenny Scharf Room, which was named after and designed by the popular painter. I ventured there one night by myself, hoping to meet someone cute. It was so dark and cold outside, the prospect seemed hopeless, but I was craving some company. It was my first visit to Tunnel and I was floored: It was a black hole, a fun-house mirror of clubs within clubs. When I finally found the Kurfew party, my hopes of hooking up dimmed. It was a lot of super-young guys, many running around in body paint, which I’ve always thought repulsive, like covering yourself with whipped cream and strawberries.

  Entering the Kenny Scharf Room was like stepping inside one of his paintings: There was fun fur everywhere, and black light that made everyone look creepy, with their eyes and teeth aglow. I milled around in the shadows, observing the scene, but eventually met a very groomed (and, more important, unpainted) guy named Michael. He told me he had just graduated from NYU and worked some kind of finance job that had been passed down from his family. He wasn’t setting my sirens off, but I decided to go home with him anyway. His place was a penthouse with expensive-looking rugs and a chandelier in the foyer. We fell into bed, made out a little, and then just fell asleep. I took his number the next morning and left.

  We set up a date for the following week, and he told me he wanted to take me to an off-Broadway show. No one had taken me to one before and I was excited, even though I knew I didn’t care about seeing him again. We met up at a Starbucks on Astor Place, where he revealed our two tickets for Stomp.

  Stomp? Are you fucking kidding me? I thought. Ugh, so cheesy. I had seen this in a touring production three years ago. My face lit up with a phony smile and I pretended to be thrilled as we filed into the theater with all the high school tourist groups. They gave it a standing ovation at the end. Out of all the shows going on in New York City, he had taken me to Stomp. Barf. I realized right then that just because you were from New York and had money didn’t mean that you had taste. I guess I got what I deserved. We had met at Kurfew, for Christ’s sake.

  I began going out a lot—often by myself, since I hadn’t made those kinds of friends yet. The late nights outside were silent as I stepped out of the Cake Factory into the streets for the long walk to the subway, passing by sex workers who dotted the corners, teetering on their heels. Though these streets weren’t without dangers, the atmosphere wasn’t as thick with tension as my previous neighborhood.

  When I was out, I still felt the remains of an anger, a soft boil that came on in the gay bars and clubs. I would feel like my fifteen-year-old self again, still stuck in the hierarchy of high school. But now it was with gays. I remained gangly. My clothes were nothing fancy. I didn’t have any muscle yet, even though I’d started lifting weights. From barstools I watched, fascinated, men who were bigger and hotter than I was. I was both jealous and judgmental of them. They were everything I wanted and didn’t want to be.

  Nothing made me feel lonelier than going to the Roxy. On Saturday nights it was heaving, all the wild-eyed butch boys and queens living for Victor Calderone’s DJ sets. The heat was so thick you could barely remember that it was snowing outside. I was invisible to those men with their muscles and succinct haircuts, clipped facial hair. They looked right through me.

  Barracuda was a Chelsea bar with a warmer vibe, and the bartender, Darren Dryden, was the kind of guy you would drop-kick a gerbil to sleep with. He was short and hairy, almost a little Greek-looking, stocky with a smoky, dreamy smile. I’d sit at the bar, probably seeming like a desperate child, and order my vodka tonics. Every once in a while he’d tell me it was on the house, which made me feel special, at least for a few minutes.

  Sometimes I ended up at Big Cup on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea, a bright, social café. It didn’t seem like there were too many of them in New York. One of the problems there was the big cups themselves. As an avid coffee drinker, I was grossed out by the extremely large mugs. I’d been spoiled by Seattle’s distinct, delicious brews. It seemed as if New York hadn’t quite learned yet, and it all tasted watered-down to me.

  I sat in Big Cup and read books, glancing up as one handsome man after another entered. Indeed, when the door opened, everyone else looked up to see who was coming in. I was amazed at people I recognized from the porn videos I’d watched over the years. One day I saw Max Grand and was spellbound by how he moved so confidently through the room, greeting all the guys he knew. What it must have felt like being so popular, and knowing that at times everybody around you had observed you taking it six ways to Sunday.

  I hadn’t been watching much porn since I’d gotten to New York. I had a VCR set up with a tiny TV now in my room, but there were only two videos that I had: a Bel Ami movie called Sauna Paradiso, and an old William Higgins flick called Sailor in the Wild, which I had pilfered from Dan Savage’s basement the previous winter. Both of them did the trick when I needed to rub one out. I was way too impatient with any kind of porn on the computer—loading up grainy thumbnails, having to wait two full minutes while the photo slowly revealed itself, by the centimeter. Sometimes, though, in a pinch, just the suspense was enough to get me off.

  Mary and I talked at least a couple times a week. Neither of us could afford the long-distance bills, so we had to fill in the blanks by mailing each other collages of JonBenét Ramsey and Phyllis Diller cut from tabloids, or just plain old letters. I would receive envelopes from Outwater Plastics, the office she worked at, where she killed time at her desk by penning me acidic notes. Sometimes we would include pictures of ourselves with Post-its on them.

  “I’m doing it,” she said one evening on the phone.

  “What, rejoining Amway?” I quipped. Once, a coworker had taken her out of town to try to get her into that scheme. After a lecture, she’d been somehow lured by motivational speakers/proselytizers onto an RV in a parking lot where she’d pretended to “find Christ.” Mary would sometimes do something just for a good story.

  “Seattle,” she said. She was going next week to interview for jobs and find an apartment.

  But she didn’t know anyone up there. “Do you want me to come and look at places with y
ou?”

  “Nah, you’ve got school, and my mom is coming with me anyway. You can visit when I’m settled.”

  I was excited for her but felt a pang of anxiety. It was great she was getting out of Arizona, but would she be able to navigate a new city completely by herself? It could be a fresh start for her, and maybe she could find a way to get healthier. She was so bored in Arizona, and I knew she longed to be somewhere more sophisticated. At least she was taking the initiative to make a change. It was a good sign. I just hoped it was the right decision.

  IT WAS HOT OUT NOW and the air was viscous. Smells wafted through the city like dead seaweed in a sour-cream ocean, scents of hot nuts and melting butter. The heat seemed to expand sounds that had been absent in the freezing temperatures. Doors of buses hissed louder, stray street chatter became piercing. Pipes blew hot exhaust in my face as I jaywalked through traffic jams. Sometimes I raced in front of cars. Other New Yorkers didn’t seem to mind being in a cab’s crosshairs. A couple times I saw a bicyclist or pedestrian lying on the ground, a driver nearby pacing and pulling at his hair, in tears, a crowd gathered. A friend told me one day that a woman had just been backed over and crunched by a garbage truck in Union Square.

  The Cake Factory was no longer frozen like a meat locker. It had become the opposite, a place for things to rot. I rigged an air conditioner to hang out of my window, which was loud enough to block out the sound of the rooster crowing in the morning. Some heavy rains blew through the city and caught me by surprise.

  One night I lay propped up reading White Noise. I could feel the hard wall behind my head through the thin pillow. Above the top of my book, I saw something glimmer. Water was sluicing down the entire length of my blue wall. The steady trickle ended in a long, sad puddle on the red synthetic carpet. My heart sank. It was like finding out my room had herpes.