Boys Keep Swinging

by Jake Shears

  We all then went back to our table after we changed our clothes to wait for our award categories to be announced. We won the first, then the second. And when Siouxsie Sioux emerged from the wings of the stage to reveal the winners of the last award, I realized we were going to have won them all. When she called our name, we stood up from the table. I felt like I was going to pass out. A confusing feeling washed over me. It was a mixture of absolute accomplishment and finality. We began our walk to the stage and all I could think was It’s over. I never want to watch the footage of that moment. I imagine that I must have looked so sad.

  This was a peak, and it felt like the end. We had reached the top in the UK. We had the best-selling record of the year, moved over three million copies in that country alone. We’d won all the awards we possibly could that night. There was nowhere to go from here but down. This was the moment I had wished for when we had first arrived in London. I had wanted it, whatever the price. As I approached the stage, it dawned on me that I’d never quite known what form that would take. And now I saw it very clearly. The price was the comedown, and it was time to pay the piper.

  Our last night of the tour was a few weeks later in February, and we performed at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Oscar party. My mom and dad and Jennifer Lebert, my former guardian from Arizona, all came into town. The band was in high spirits, ready for a break. I ran out of clothes to wear, though, and was dressed like Blanche from The Golden Girls. I sat next to Elton and Mary J. Blige at dinner. Elton turned to me at one point: “You want to come to Vegas, you big homo?”

  I said that yes, of course I would. He was going to be at Caesars for a couple weeks the following month and invited Scott and me to come write with him. We could work on the stage at the Colosseum in the daytime. He grabbed a marker from someone and reached over to me and wrote his phone number on my shirt collar in Sharpie.

  The evening continued in this surreal vein. Elton introduced me to Liz Taylor a few minutes later, her eyes and diamonds sparkling. I asked her how her night had been so far and with a kind smile she said, “It’s great. I just wish the music wasn’t so loud.”

  I LUGGED MY TWO SUITCASES up the five-floor walk-up to my tiny little place. The stairs had always been crooked, but now it was hard to ascend them without falling into the wall. The paint was peeling on the banister and I could see sandy bits of broken glass and dirt in the cracks of every corner. I lugged one case up a flight at a time, and then trod back down and grabbed the other one—they were too big to round the corners with both at once. It reminded me of heaving my luggage up the Penn Station steps so many years ago.

  I finally reached my door, slipped the key in the lock, and pushed it open. The place was still, frozen and foreign, as if it were waiting for someone who wasn’t me. I pulled my cases in and they filled a third of the kitchen. It was silent. As I walked forward, I passed the tiny room that my roommate had moved out of. I saw it had been completely redecorated. I realized that Chris had turned it into a glamorous little dressing room closet space for me. He had been here and organized everything, gone through all my things piece by piece, imagining where all these objects and weird clothing had come from. Chris had been going to grad school at Yale, studying sculpture and video art, but had spent quite a bit of time at the apartment since I left.

  I stepped into the living room/bedroom and sat down on a worn footstool. The sun licked at my face. Everything around me looked like a relic of some other time. It was all my stuff—my stereo and CDs, my posters on the wall of The Muppet Movie and The Last Unicorn—but now it felt like someone else’s.

  When I stepped out onto Twelfth Street, at first glance it didn’t look like much had changed. Ciao for Now, the café right under me that I had eaten at every day, was still bustling. The owners, Kevin and Amy, greeted me with open arms and a grilled sandwich. I then walked around the block and saw that the Cock had moved, and the old space was being renovated into some kind of restaurant. Gross, I thought. It seemed unholy that anyone could be cooking or eating food in there. I walked farther down Avenue A. Leshko’s was gone and had turned into a Mexican margarita joint. I walked down still farther, thinking of ringing Mark Tusk’s doorbell to see if he was around to get stoned and listen to some Tina Turner records, but I realized he had moved from the city. I strolled to the Bowery, dialing Matthew Delgado’s number to see if he was around to catch up. I just got his voice-mail, and when I reached the building, I could see from the street that all of his plants were gone from the penthouse deck. It looked like he had moved too.

  I’d thought for some reason that when I got home from tour, from this seemingly endless journey around the world, I would experience some kind of celebratory feeling, a sense of homecoming. Now, I realized that there would be no ticker-tape parade, nobody calling me much for a while. Everyone had just assumed that I was gone anyway. New York had simply moved on without me. As I climbed each stair back up to my place, I could feel my stomach sinking with every step. I quietly paper-toweled the dust off of my TV, and I heard the voice starting, as if on cue, waiting to pipe up in this very moment. What are you going to do now? it said. Better come up with something fast. I ordered some weed from a delivery service and smoked. A few more voices chimed in. Everyone’s waiting. And then another. What do you even think you’re going to write about anyway?

  Chris and I took a much-needed vacation to Maui. I felt like I was in shock, some kind of cracked shell made of dead leaves. We stayed at a little gay hotel and went to a hippieish nude beach every day. Chris was driving us around for the first time, after having just received his driver’s license. I had lost the ability to drive, living in New York for so long, and hadn’t been behind the wheel in many years. One day we took the Road to Hana, this incredibly windy, steep one-lane trail with only sheer cliffs beyond the edges. I gripped the dashboard, petrified we were going to go sailing off the side.

  I called Scott, who informed me that GLAAD wanted us to perform at a function, and that somehow this was related to MTV, and they might start playing our videos. I completely lost my mind. “When does this shit end?” I remember screaming into the phone. “We’re supposed to be fucking done! Why are there more gigs coming in? Fuck if I’m going to do it. And basically fuck you. And Neil.” Chris could hear me screaming out on our room’s porch.

  Even when my temper would flare, or I’d get so preoccupied putting out fires, Chris never acted bothered by it. He accepted where I was at that moment of my life, becoming a refuge from outside pressures and pulls. He stayed even-keeled in the face of my pandemonium. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy task. I was drawn to the consistency of his presence and patience, two things I needed so badly. Also, for the first time, after years of being unapologetically slutty, I was in a monogamous relationship. The dependence on him emotionally and sexually was a relief from the scattered world around me.

  One day at the hotel I called my dentist’s office to make an appointment with the lovely lady who had worked on my teeth for years. I needed a checkup when we got back. Her husband answered awkwardly. “Hey, Jason, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but she passed away recently.” I didn’t ask why, but said I was sorry and hung up the phone. It didn’t seem possible. She was so young and sweet and was the only dentist I’d ever looked forward to seeing.

  Chris and I went to a liquor store, where I got a small bottle of rum and drank it on the beach. The waves were pretty big, but I decided to wade in just to my waist and play in them. I had a buzz on, and was feeling sad about my dentist. I’d spent a lot of time with her in that chair.

  The waves crashed over me. I closed my eyes and allowed them to slap at my chest. But suddenly my feet weren’t touching the bottom. I started to swim back to solid ground, but I wasn’t making any headway. Another wave smacked over me, and then another. I got my head above water and thought to swim sideways, because that’s what they tell you to do in a riptide. But the waves kept pulling me out farther. Now I was underwater more than
I was above it and I began to panic: The ocean was sucking me into it and I was losing my strength. I got my head above water. “Chris!” I yelled, and as I went back down I saw him waving at me. I struggled to get above one more time and just yelled, “Help!”

  A plain inner voice spoke. It was myself, checking in, saying that this might be it. I couldn’t breathe. Every one of my limbs was cramping just trying to get my head up for one more breath. I guess I’m drowning, I thought as Chris’s hand reached under me and placed my arm around the boogie board he’d grabbed to haul me back to shore. I was amazed that he had gotten to me so quick, that I hadn’t been irretrievable.

  On the sand I lay on my back and felt sucked dry. I was shaken, had almost disappeared. Everything seemed wrong. Was I even supposed to be here? Why wasn’t I working? I didn’t deserve a vacation.

  “Honey.” Chris took my hand and smiled. “Someone wants to say hi. I think he’s waving at us.” I looked to where he was pointing and there was a humpback whale that had surfaced in the distance and was waving a flipper up and down.

  We got some pot brownies on Little Beach and ate them back in our room at sunset. I got super high, and we made love in a fiery yellow, orange, purple, and red light. It barely made sense to me that I had someone in my life now who could love me so much, could save me from drowning in the ocean. As the sun dipped below the horizon we listened to “I Am a Bird Now” by Antony and the Johnsons and held each other.

  So much had changed so quickly.

  THE COLOSSEUM AT CAESARS PALACE felt like A huge ornate salad bowl. I was standing on the edge of the stage, right at the lip, with a mic in my hand and singing at the top of my lungs. What was coming out of my mouth was nonsense, and there was no one in the audience. Elton sat at his red piano behind me, just banging away, while Scott gripped a bass and plucked along.

  “What about that?” Elton looked at me and reached for a sip of his Diet Coke. “It’s got a very New Orleans vibe to it, no?”

  “Let’s try it with the chorus thing coming a little earlier.”

  “Don’t bore us, queen. Get to the chorus.” He played a few more chords and glanced up again. “You need a name.”

  “I have a name,” I said.

  “No, your drag name. I give everybody a drag name. . . .” Elton studied my face for a second as if he were just looking at me for the first time. “Britney.”

  “Britney?” I was mildly offended. “Really?”

  “Britney Shears. All right, done.” He began to play again. I wasn’t crazy about “Britney,” but I guessed I had no choice at this point. We’d been at it for a few days: Elton would play his show at night, and then in the day we’d set up a studio onstage and just have fun playing around. After the show each night we had dinner together with various people, including Robin Hurlstone, a very debonair British art dealer with a dry sense of humor who had been married to Joan Collins years ago.

  “Tell Robin about your Bette Midler obsession,” Elton said.

  “I’m not obsessed with Bette Midler,” I lied.

  “Obsession is relative, darling.” Robin leaned in.

  “ ‘Oh Industry’ from Beaches is just one of my favorite songs,” I explained, rolling my eyes.

  “This is what I love about you,” Elton said, glancing at Robin. “He’s a fucking weirdo.”

  We ate late and spent the evenings laughing harder than I’d laughed in a long time. Every step I took wandering around on the carpets at Caesars, it was like I was wearing someone else’s shoes. I was reminded, as I breezed through the smoky casino, watching the wrinkled and the seeking, sinking their coins into the slots, how just ten years before I had been only a few blocks away, telling my parents I was gay. Would I ever have imagined, staring at that Dorothy diorama, that I would actually be back in Vegas, writing songs with Elton John?

  One night I watched Elton’s show by myself. I sat in one of the boxes and realized I recognized Paul Shaffer and his family sitting next to me. Elton took the stage and began to sing, his iconic voice heavy with experience and deep sadness.

  He dedicated “Rocket Man” to me that night. And as he played the song, I began to weep into my hands. It was so cathartic and confusing and painful and exquisite. I’ve never cried so hard before or since. I had been sent to Mars, had come back and didn’t know who I was anymore. There had been another seismic shift inside my heart. I had attacked stages when I felt like there was nothing left; I had screamed until my voice was hoarse at people when things didn’t go right; I had fallen in love with the man who was to be my life partner; I had made enough money that I didn’t need to work for years if I didn’t want to. There were now so many people counting on me, from the record label to the fans themselves. And in that moment, when Elton called out my name, I truly did not know if I could carry the weight. The future looked terrifying.

  I LAY IN MY SMALL double bed with Chris snoring softly next to me. It was 5 a.m. and it was still dark. I was wide-awake, my heart racing in my chest. The moment when my eyes opened and I registered that first note of consciousness, when I realized I was alive and human, was now the worst part of every day. There was nothing to do other than quietly get out of bed and face it, which meant immediately putting pen to notebook. I was filling them up, with endless scribbles and scratches of words that didn’t mean anything. Broken melodies plagued every waking minute. I tried to pluck them from the air, saying to myself, That one? Or what about that one? My brain would obsessively try to turn into a song every word or phrase that I saw on a sign or read in a book. It was as though I were scratching at the wall of a room with no doors.

  I was usually going to bed at around 7 p.m. now. I would take any chance I could get to retreat to my dark room and sleep. Being awake was miserable. I was getting adrenaline rushes now almost every minute, that feeling of flying down a dip in a roller coaster. I didn’t want to see people or hang out with anyone or go to parties. Every five fucking minutes it seemed like someone was saying, “How are you?” “How’s the record coming?” “I can’t wait to hear what you do next.”

  The parties in New York had changed, too. A lot of places had shut down. Even Luxx in Williamsburg wasn’t there anymore, much less any remnants of the electroclash scene. It had died the death. Now most of the party invitations were for four-course dinners hosted by one magazine or another. I did have a good time at these glamorous occasions. But often, I sat in my chair, thinking, Don’t get used to this. They’re going to realize pretty soon that you don’t belong here.

  The designers Heatherette put me in their fashion show and I was embarrassed to walk down the runway. Why would anybody even know who the hell I was? I would end up on a red carpet and I’d just want to hide somewhere, go back behind the filing cabinets in the teacher’s lounge, like when I was fifteen. They put me and Ana in the front row of a Marc Jacobs show and I almost panicked.

  This isn’t to say I wasn’t having fun, because I was. Especially getting to meet so many incredible people whom I’d looked up to all my life. Like being pushed by Ingrid Sischy into the back of a car with Iman. Or sitting across from Lou Reed as he gazed at a menu, watching him flip his clip-on sunglasses up with a scowl on his face, listening to him order his food in his deep voice. Rehearsing a song with Norah Jones and David Byrne in David’s studio. Chris and I spent many evenings now with Michael Stipe and his boyfriend, Thomas Dozol, eating delicious food and listening to music into the wee hours of the morning. Patti Smith sang us a new song one night while we sat around the dinner table for Michael’s birthday. David Furnish took me to Paris for a Dior show where I got to talk to Mick Jagger. Scott and I tracked down Paul Williams and began writing songs with him, as well as with Carlos Alomar, who’d been Bowie’s guitar player since Young Americans. Bryan Ferry spent a week with Scott and me in the studio in New York recording songs for a possible new Roxy Music album; then we went with him to London and recorded with the rest of the band. Every day, it felt like one outlandish rock-and-roll fa
ntasy after another was being lovingly fulfilled.

  Chris and I had just returned from a week at Elton and David’s summer house in Nice. It was like being in some luxurious palace, sunbathing all day and then going to elaborate dinners at night, with everyone from Mikhail Gorbachev to Rod Stewart, whom I witnessed one night sitting next to Elton, the pair of them catching up like two gossipy women at bridge club. That week we were staying at the Nice house with Susannah Constantine, a UK TV personality who would become one of my most unlikely best friends. George Michael was also there with his then-boyfriend, Kenny Goss. George and I went on walks through the elaborate gardens and talked songwriting and his love of soul and R&B. He said he had a song for me to sing, kept mentioning it for years, but sadly he never sent it or played it for me.

  One night, a bunch of us were hanging out by the pool late at night, swimming and laughing. I wondered where George and Kenny were, so I dried off with some loud Versace-print towel and went to tell them we were by the pool, and that they should come hang. My hand rapped on the door once before it was flung open by Kenny and I walked in.

  “What’re you guys doing? You should come outside, it’s super fun—” I stopped in my tracks as I looked down to see George naked on the bed, facedown, spread-eagled. He’d just been lounging as I barged in. He was looking back at me and laughing.