I am in a gay bar in the West Village that reminds me of the dance club where the television show Club MTV was filmed in the late 1980's. It is cavernous, with multiple rooms of various size serving different purposes depending on the night and the particular clientele in that night. There is one large room where the main dance floor resides, there is a raised stage off of this dance floor where shows are performed: drag shows, musical performances by aging gay icons, and various "beauty" contests involving barely legal muscular Chelsea boys stripping nude are among the most popular events staged here. This room is surrounded by a balcony level, small tables and chairs placed against the railings so groups may get drunk and entertain themselves by judging all those below them. The walls are all lighted squares of white translucent plexiglass, large mirrors, and inset television monitors. Musical video promo clips from obscure European DJs and dance music acts, interspersed with the occasional Madonna and 1980's new wave or club classic, play on these TVs. Nights are themed, so certain nights will see Broadway clips emanating from the multitudinous screens, while other nights will cut the music with gay-themed clips from television sit-coms. The bathroom is one large black-tiled room ringed by urinals, and above each urinal there is a small TV screen inset into the wall. Broadcast on these screens are surveillance images of the bar, dance floor, and other club areas, intercut with clips from hardcore gay pornography. The bartenders are all muscular, gym-toned, and spray-tanned, and all are wearing only ribbed tank-tops and underwear, generally boxer-briefs. This is the standard uniform for all bar employees. There are no women working in this bar and there is a strict quota of how many women will be allowed in the bar. One bartender refers to it as the "hag limit".
There are no women in the bar tonight. I am sitting at the large main floor bar next to "H", a friend of mine who works with me in Lower Manhattan. He is older than me by about 15 years or so. He enjoys picking up boys who've just come of legal drinking age. He is a funny and intelligent man, well-read, educated, traveled. He lives alone in The Bronx in the home where he grew up. He works in the cubicle third down from mine. I am a temp doing data entry. I was informed recently this assignment will end without producing an offer of full-time employment. My friend has been working to try and find me a position in another department. We are sitting at the large main floor bar drinking very strong mixed drinks consisting of gin as the main ingredient. It is happy hour and the drink specials are two for one. "H" is a friend of mine. I am telling him of my meeting with "J", a woman I am romantically interested in, who until just an hour ago was also my Japanese tutor. It is a weekday evening, around 6:30 PM, some time in August. Kylie Minogue is playing onscreen, and Gus Gus, and Pet Shop Boys, and a clip from "Frasier".
It is summer in New York City and it is hot, mildly humid, and still very bright outside. I am sitting in an enclosed outdoor plaza somewhere near Fifth Avenue, near Mid-Town, sitting with "J" who is my Japanese tutor. She is young, younger than me by a year, and she is very petite, slight of frame, with skin the color of a soft white light bulb, and short black hair. She is wearing a sleeveless summer dress in burgundy covered with some type of small floral print. She has a lightweight black cardigan sweater tied around her waist for wearing in overly air-conditioned stores and subway cars. She is Japanese, a classically trained pianist, working as a language tutor to pay rent on a small studio apartment near the Empire State Building she shares with another Japanese girl. She spent time working on a cruise ship that routed around Alaska. She is beautiful, natural, unassuming, and further serves as proof of my continued attraction for women who do not wear cosmetic products. I have been taking lessons from her for the past two months. We meet once a week after work. Tonight is our usual lesson night. It is around 5:45 PM. We are talking about our friendship, skirting around the subject of our mutual attraction to each other. She says she wants to take me out for a belated birthday dinner. My birthday was a month ago in July. I am informing her that I have just learned my temp assignment will soon end and I will have to stop taking lessons for the foreseeable future as I will not be able to afford to pay her until I'm working again. She is surprised, concerned for me, outwardly expresses disappointment. "J" is a friend of mine I hope to turn into a lover. It is 5:34 PM.
I'm in a restaurant off of Fifth Avenue near Carnegie Hall. I am at a long table around which are seated people I do not know and have not met before this evening. They are friends of "J", some students of hers, some friends of students of hers, some boyfriends and girlfriends of friends of students of hers. "J" sits across the table from me and down one seat to my right. She has short black hair, but tonight it has somehow grown at least six inches and hits her shoulders. I mention to her how impressed I am at how quickly she has grown her hair since our lesson three days prior. She smiles gracefully at my compliment, and, as if to school me, put me in my place, and seduce me simultaneously, says to me, "That is the mystery of woman." It is after 10 PM, Friday, August 3rd.
I'm sitting in CAMI Hall, a recital hall located in the Carnegie Hall building. I'm dressed in a suit that fit me perfectly before I moved to New York. Around me are the friends and relatives of those who are performing pieces in tonight's program. The program consists of several violinists, several vocalists, and several pianists, of which, one of them is performing now. It is "J" and she appears almost dwarfed by the glossy black hugeness of the Steinway she is sitting at passionately pounding out a Chorale Prelude by J.S. Bach. There is so much ferocity to her performance it occurs to me that if the piano weighed just one ounce less, it would find itself being shoved offstage with each note. There is a seriousness, a solemnness to her face I have never witnessed prior, a visage that completely disappears, replaced by her usual lightness when she takes her bows upon completing her piece. It is 8:40 PM.
.............................
There are things that happen, things that involve people who are now gone and who can never actually exist in their entirety; they must be edited down, cleaned up, made to fit into the accepted parameters set up by those around them, protected from the consequences of truth. I keep certain promises and only break the ones where I will be the only victim. There are little things that can survive, like the feeling of her body weight on top of me as we lay in each others arms in a dark empty room. There is a television on in the room next door, emanating a murmur of scattered laughter and advertisement jingles. This is taking place in New York City in the early Spring of 2001.
They know about each other. They are having dinner together and I am sitting in my apartment watching television news in a foreign language and I am knowing they are having dinner together. I came home from work, walking towards the apartment, down a street in Queens, and ran into her walking towards the station I had just left. We exchanged the usual "what and where to" and she was coy but not clever, so I knew what was happening. I walked the rest of the way home with that feeling one has when they feel they have been caught doing something they've sworn they were not doing, a small sense of dread of consequence. Though, only small because what I've done is not really wrong, and two of us are in on the joke. It is a joke, after all, though one that will prove in short time to end with a most unfunny punch-line. It is nearing the end of a long New York City Winter, early 2001. All Winters can be described as harsh, this one was particularly cruel, more so for certain others. One of whom, is sitting in a restaurant in Manhattan right now waiting for her dinner companion to arrive from Queens.
I feel sorry for every single woman I have ever fallen in love with, doubly so for any woman who has found herself in the unenviable position of reciprocating those same feelings. Luckily, this has not happened often. As of this writing, I can think of only three women who, for however short a time it ended up lasting, were in love with me more than I them. One of these unfortunate incidents happened during my senior year of high school and involved a freshman on the girl's basketball team, so I refuse to count this because any love under the age of 18 is ridiculous. I can think of only two women who were in love with me more than I them. One of these unfortunate women ended up fostering a most unhealthy attachment to me that stemmed from a psychotic fear she had that she was destined to die single and unloved, all because she had recently reached the age of 30. She was under the misguided notion I was her last chance. I refuse to count her because I believe her love to have been fueled by her mental anguish. I can think of only one woman who was in love with me more than I her. She is now happily married to a man considered to be greatly superior to me by those who consider these types of things. I refuse to count her because she has now so obviously found a greater love. As of this writing I can think of no women who were in love with me more than I them.
I am sitting on the rim of a large stone fountain, itself situated across from the Plaza Hotel just off the entrance to Central Park. Seated next to me is "M", a girl who represents a pattern in my life, one of a more common occurrence, that of being the recipient of a pedestal upon which she will sit atop, gladly, looking out beyond me. It is something like the waves of the ocean that lap up onto the sands of the coast; if one sits and stares at these surging tides, it is said, over the course of centuries patterns will emerge, one will see the same waves crash in the same exact way, and, as they recede, leave behind the same darkened stains across the land. Everything that seems random and without structure ultimately will prove to be part of it's own pattern. Patterns are just decorative repetitions, most unhealthy. "M" is a crashing wave in the form of a beautiful 19-year old girl, at this moment sharing the rim of a large stone fountain with me, on a cool summer evening, both of us staring off into the mouth of the park, both of us moving our mouths to form unremarkable sounds we will not remember as words. This is the type of conversation former lovers have when they both know the evening is over, that it will end for one of them differently than hoped, one not knowing how to gracefully put the pin to the balloon, the other not wanting to let go of the string keeping that balloon from flying away. It has been a year, almost to the day, since we were lovers. Now, sitting side by side with the gentle splashing sound of water directly behind us and the wide yawn of manicured city forest before us, that time is only a quaint memory of youthful lust for her, and a bitter taste of soured hope for me. It is the evening of my birthday, July 20, 2000. "M" is a girl I know, who may or may not be a friend, who once may or may not have been in love with me, who once shared a bed with me in San Francisco; a year ago, a side note of another vacation. In a few minutes, she will enter the lobby of the Plaza only to have the doorman procure a taxi from the queue for her. I will watch her slip into the back of the cab, watch it pull off down Fifth Avenue. I will never see her again.
"M" had made promises. She had promised she was going to tell me she loved me and flew half way around the world so as to say it face to face in the greatest city on Earth. It would be very simplistic to say she broke this promise, because to keep this promise would have required her to lie, and lies are worse than broken promises, especially lies about love. A credit to "M" is that she always was honest. It can't be held against her that her truths came sharp as knives. We all have burdens to bear and this is hers.
It is early evening, just before 7 PM, in Mid-Town Manhattan as I approach the theatre at Studio 54. "M" is waiting outside the glass doors that still bear the famous logo of the long-defunct club. As she takes notice of my arrival, and our eyes meet, a smile that is all youthful energy and teenaged sexuality, all teeth and upper gums, beams brightly out at me, cleaving me into two bifurcate halves of boy and man, lust and need. She is dressed in dark denim jeans and a purple sleeveless top; a small lightweight black cardigan sweater folded over her crossed arms serves as a balancing parallel to the stick straight brush strokes of jet black ink that frame her face, fall past her shoulders, and end sharply over her chest. She is pure feminine seduction and has probably been handed business cards and bad lines from passing men several times whilst waiting on my arrival. This, too, is a burden for her to bear, but one she secretly revels in.
After we hug, "M" hands me the large softly colored envelope in which is my birthday card. We are here tonight to see "Cabaret", the tickets to which were a birthday gift from another woman, one who loves me with a severity built out of desperation, so it does not count. She bought these tickets for us, but I ended our relationship shortly after, out of recognition of her failing mental state, and in preparation for "M's" arrival and promised declaration of love. Now, we enter the theatre on tickets bought and paid for by another woman. Such is how exploitation and advantage works. It's OK, though, because I'm being used, too. "M" is here for the show, mostly. One can't come to New York without taking in a show, after all, and how much better it is when one does not have to pay for it with more than the $2.99 of a birthday card. "M" is 19 years old and this is the most narcissistic age in the life of beautiful women. She is merely taking advantage of pleasures and experiences she can get out of men who are all too willing to offer them up for the chance to fulfill their objectification of her. I'd like to think of all of these men she meets while traveling I am the only one who truly loves her. This may even be so, but it may also stand to reason that other men feel this way, too. All she has to do is pout her lips and furrow her brow in an expression of regretful sadness, an expression that says she is wounded as much by her own actions as you are, and any man believes anything she says, any man believes he is the only special one, the one who truly loves her. We are just victims of wanting something we can't have; the love and affection of the type of woman who needs and requires neither of those things.
.............................
I'm riding the N train back to my apartment. It is some time after 3 AM early Sunday morning and the car I'm riding in is empty. I have just left a group of people behind in Brooklyn, a group of people I will never see again. They are not friends, only people I had met tonight through a girl I had met this afternoon after I lit her cigarette outside of H&M on Fifth Avenue. She is from Arizona or New Mexico, is of Korean descent, and has a name that speaks of both her adoptive parents and her hippie Southwest upbringing. She is in town for the weekend, and has a boyfriend back in Tempe or Santa Fe. She will be starting University in the Fall and is out visiting friends who've already made the move to loft spaces in Williamsburg. We all hung out in a dive bar near their apartment and shared an eightball of coke, taking turns snorting it off our house keys in the small single-stall restroom just off the pool table. One of them asked me how I felt about Australians. When I answered that I had never personally known any Australians, and have nothing against them, he looked at me with disgust, ranted on about how horrible Australians are, then stormed across the room to the bar. Later, he would call a group of people at another table "faggots". I said my goodbyes to the hippie-chick and departed for the L train. Now on the empty N train, I'm dancing down the middle aisle, swinging around the poles, humming an incomprehensible song, staring out the windows as the lights of the city flicker by. Out in the distance are the landmarks of the Manhattan skyline, marking off the various districts; Rockefeller Plaza in the 50's, the Chrysler in the mid-40's, Empire State in the mid-30's, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. It is a beautiful, quiet, still, warm early morning in the early Summer of 2000. I'm alone on a subway car, swaying above the empty streets. If there is an afterlife beyond death, then it is this moment here, in a forever night, in an infinite existence of peaceful stillness. There will be no death and Heaven is a small apartment in Queens.
.............................
I'm sitting in a gay bar in the West Village with "H", summer of 2001. It is the third night this week. A friend of his, a young man "H" recently started sleeping with, asks why I am so amenable to being dragged out to gay bars by various colleagues and friends. I tell him that I don't enjoy the hassle of straight bars, the expectant need of having to be a straight man. He tells me I'm just afraid of women. We drink our hi-ball glasses filled with vodka. He is wrong. I'm not afraid of women. I'm secretly afraid of all people, and I enjoy being around people who are also secretly afraid, as most homosexual men are. It is August of 2005 and I am staying at "H"'s house while I look for a new apartment in Queens. It is near 3 AM. The door to my bedroom swings open, "H" stands in the frame with arms out. He is wearing his fringed tallit shawl and has the leather tefillin prayer boxes tied around both arms. He enters the room with boisterous Hebrew. He is extremely drunk. He stops suddenly as he catches sight of himself in the mirror that hangs over the dresser. "H" is sitting on the end of the bed, crying. He has confessed to me drunkenly before that if he could do it all over again, and had a choice, he would be heterosexual.
I'm sitting in a gay bar. I'm sitting in an empty cubicle. I'm sitting in a Human Resources office. I'm sitting in a classroom. I'm sitting in a cab, on a subway, on an airplane. I'm watching out over Manhattan. I'm watching a clip from "Frasier". I'm watching her pound out Bach on a gigantic grand piano. I'm holding a pair of scissors. I'm holding a mechanical pencil. I'm holding a curved hip ruler. I'm holding a stack of manila file folders. I'm holding her wrist as she is clenching a pair of scissors. I'm holding her face in my hands, her tears wetting my arms. She is shaking uncontrollably. She is shaking uncontrollably. She is shaking uncontrollably. I'm holding her in my arms for the last time. I'm holding a bottle of champagne as we run through the streets of Brooklyn, in and out of subways and taxis. It is the first hours of the new millennium in New York City and it is all one big opportunity. The city is open for business and nothing is impossible and their is an endless stream of tomorrows and forevers waiting behind every smile and every kiss. We only look like adults on the outside. It is 2009 and I'm opening a door I don't like opening. I'm in a hotel room in San Francisco. I'm vomiting into a toilet. I'm peeling away pieces of my life, ridding anything I can no longer stomach, so I never have to look at them again. I'm leaving myself with only that which is necessary to continue from this point on. Their are those people who are no longer needed and those who were never important at all. If I am friends with you now I will not be in five years. If I am friends with you in five years I do not know you now. We are all washed over and the waves cleanse. I'm leaving things loose so that they will be carried off. I'm writing a love letter to a New York that no longer exists. I'm holding my stomach. I'm holding a time sheet. I'm holding a cup of coffee. I'm watching a heart break in front of me. I'm watching a building collapse. I'm watching 2,600 people die.
It is a beautiful morning in New York City. It is the eleventh day of the ninth month of the 2001st year and I am waking up in the section of Queens known as Astoria. I'm waking up to the sound of sharp electronic chirps coming from a clock radio that sits on the floor next to my frameless futon mattress. It is 6:40 AM. I am getting ready for work, showering, dressing. I am walking to the station down the long wide stretch of road that is Astoria Boulevard, walking from an apartment I share with a college student enrolled as a freshman at Hunter. She is asleep in her room. It is 7:55 AM. I am standing on the Astoria BLVD. platform and the lightly condensed clouds of breath that surround my head are making their way into my mouth and nose, filling up my body with the coolness of early morning. I am running late. It is 8:10 AM. I am now leaving the borough of Queens, leaving the section known as Long Island City. It is an industrial area full of warehouses, storage facilities, bakeries, television studios, car parks, and increasingly, housing in the form of condominium developments. It is 8:26 AM. I'm sitting on a train. I'm exiting the station. I'm stepping out onto the sidewalk. It is 9:05 AM.
.............................
Posts
