131 Different Things Read online

  If he’d finally heard it, he’d already forgotten my name.

  “Listen! MY FRIEND! You dated that Vicki chick, right? She was just here! You missed her! Such a wild, wild lady! Fucking PSYCHED to see her out again, am I right?! Man, when she called me last week and said she was looking to party, I fucking FLIPPED!” He leaned in close to me. “SUCH a cool, cool girl. You know? I saw her at a Fashion Week thing hanging with Mary-Kate the other night and she was looking fantastic. That was a solid hang.”

  What was I being told? Was it code? Patterson Childs’s breath smelled of vagina. It mixed poorly with the patchouli. I thought about Patterson going down on someone, Vicki specifically.

  “Excuse me.” I threw up on Patterson Childs’s suit.

  He shoved me away hard, almost a punch.

  Francis seemed to pull the pint glass out of my hand and drink it down while smooshing the face of our adolescent rock idol with his free hand all in one seamless motion. We were bum-rushed out of the back room. We tangled in the divider curtain and tumbled into the bouncer. Then it was all security and arms and we were being pushed to the front door, but there were so many people in the way Francis and I couldn’t help ourselves. I grabbed at a drink and dropped it bottom-first onto a table, the beer shooting upward as the glass shattered. Francis grabbed a purse and threw it over heads toward the back of the room.

  We landed hard on the sidewalk outside. It had started snowing, but that was barely a cushion. Francis and I lay there laughing. I hadn’t gotten any vomit on myself. I felt light-headed and free of poison. The red-haired manager came out and yelled about “suit damages” and “cops,” but then he got cold and went inside.

  eleven

  guys

  1 montreal 2000

  2 new york 1996

  3 los angeles 2015

  4 tokyo 2012

  5 montreal 2000

  6 san francisco 2000

  7 New York 2012

  8 los angeles 2015

  9 montreal 2000

  10 brooklyn 2000

  11 las vegas 1998

  seven bars

  one nightclub

  one loft

  & a diner

  1

  (AGAIN)

  “You threw up on what’s-his-name!”

  “I know!”

  “Ahahahahahah!”

  “I know!”

  Francis dried his tears of glee and said, “Let’s go back to Pym’s and regroup. How long will it take Vicki to get uptown and change?”

  We knew Vicki was living above 14th now, some rent-subsidized place that was technically her godmother’s. I knew she was very quick at changing clothes and she’d do her makeup in the train or cab. Maybe I’d always been rushing her. Reasonable people could disagree.

  “That idiot wanted me to think he fucked Vicki.”

  “Huh. I didn’t get that. But I trust your instincts. And the waitress wasn’t interested in me, by the way. Topsy-turvy night.”

  I patted Francis on the back.

  “Oh,” he said. “I saw Aviva in the bathroom line. She says, Fuck you, Sam.”

  Everybody I’d ever cared for was truly taking it to the hoop tonight. Was it a full moon? I ran my hand through my hair and it came back wet. Beer and vodka and snow. I popped an Altoid.

  When we got to Pym’s Cup, we were silent from the cold. It was crowded with people we knew. If you live in a city, you kiss a lot of cheeks. What starts as mockery of Europeans and fashionistas becomes habit. Then cheek-kissing becomes a bit of a grab on the side. Just a little grab. It’s not cheating. It’s barely sexual. But some cheeks do get kissed for longer, sides get grabbed with a bit more hand, a lot of fingers. It’s amazing how many people you can touch in one night. By the time Francis and I had made our way to the back, my face felt chafed and not from the cold. Before we even reached Sanita and Sarita, I had to pull Francis off a sort of regular, sort of ex–someone of his in a Black Flag T-shirt.

  Virgil shook his head as I spun Francis up to the bar. “That girl is bad news. Looks like she’s played every role in a cum-shot compilation.”

  “Naw, Virgil,” Francis said, “she’s cool.”

  “Didn’t say she wasn’t.”

  Neither Sanita nor Sarita laughed at the banter. Being women, they knew how quickly they could be put in the punch-line category. Vicki had never been down with this way of speaking either, but there was a sly faux-concerned cruelty sometimes to the way she’d talk about other women. Every girl Francis took to was “damaged” and “badly in need of realignment.” She didn’t call anyone a slut, just “sad.”

  We’d all known Vicki since she was a teenager dating Flannery. That was something we had all discussed at length, this sweet crazy girl going up and down with a horrifically unsweet skinhead. Then there was this night when Aviva was hungover and in one of her periodic boredoms with everyone we knew and stayed home and I went out with Francis and we’d gotten into it pretty hard. We stayed at the now-closed gay bar White Swallow until past closing and ended up at some indie film actress’s sublet on 23rd Street, where nothing good could come of anything. There had been the usual assortment of types; graffiti artists, bass players, an ex-lover of Mapplethorpe who was paying for all the drugs. We pretended to be dismayed and full of scorn and Francis disappeared into an upstairs bathroom with an illegible-chest-pieced lady who he of course would end up friends with. By seven in the morning, it was down to myself and some Peter Pan Posse graf guys and Vicki. She was tired of screaming Nas lyrics along with Choko, one of the more prominent artists, and I offered to split a cab with her. Her shirt was torn in interesting ways but I thought I was being a gentleman.

  Vicki had looked at me sideways and said, “Let’s walk. Clear our heads.”

  My heart went evil and I agreed.

  Vicki already had her place above Odell’s but was watching some Paper magazine photo editor’s apartment in Greenpoint. We went through half a pack of Parliament Lights on our way to the Williamsburg Bridge. Being a Sunday morning, traffic was sparse. The wind was a proper fall bracing and we alternated between huddling against it and parting when the morning sun hit our eyes and made us warm. We were coked out and laughing. We made fun of everyone we’d ever met. We never mentioned Flannery or Aviva. I talked about photography over her talking about photography but she didn’t seem to mind. I talked about my dad or what I imagined was my dad. She told me she’d be famous for being great and not stupid and that self-actualization was a choice she’d made after considerable trauma. It felt like the realest thing anyone had ever said to me. I told her that there was nothing more important than friendship and that all I wanted to do until I died was take pictures of my friends and show the whole world just how amazing they were, to capture their spark. We looked at each other. A lot. Sharing deranged grins that got more subdued the farther we walked. My hand brushed hers approximately a thousand times and I told myself it was unintentional. When the daylight cut through the cold, we defied it, acting like every contact was just what drunks who didn’t want to freeze to death did. Halfway across the bridge, she leaned into me and I pushed her away. Then I changed my mind. I kissed her hard against the fencing on the bike lanes. It was a short kiss because we were already out of breath. The second kiss was longer and I had a finger in her pussy, my wrist almost breaking against her jeans button, before I even saw a breast. I’d sucked my finger dry by the time I got home to my wife, who was cutting lines as I walked in. Aviva had been drinking tequila since I’d left and was mad at me and we fought the rest of the morning about every unkind thing either of us had ever said and passed out without fucking. In the afternoon, I woke up and silently jerked off while Aviva slept. I looked at her and thought of Vicki and came harder than I had in months. It was as close as I had ever gotten to a threesome.

  “Sam. Shot. What are you doing?”

  Virgil was looking at me like I was drooling on the pillow. There were seven shots of Jameson. Sanita, Sarita, Virgil, Francis, Mu
rray, and Drunk Fireman all grabbed theirs. We clinked glasses haphazardly.

  “Up with us. Down with them.”

  Proper shot etiquette: maintain eye contact. No one smiles until all glasses were slammed back on the bar.

  Francis belched. “We need drugs.”

  I said, “We need pizza.”

  six

  bathrooms

  I wanted

  to

  remember

  1 los angeles 2016

  2 los angeles 2004

  3 new york 1998

  4 las vegas 2015

  5 New York 2001

  6 los angeles 2015

  seven bars

  one nightclub

  one loft

  & a diner

  7

  We set off to purchase drugs. We knew the Package always had a few guys working, but it was way over on Attorney Street, and the wind was a Wendigo at the throat of a Yeti, with our two skinny bodies caught between. Francis bumped into me on purpose for warmth.

  We hit a few places on the way: Boiler Room, Cherry Tavern, Loose Lips, Cheaters’ Heaven, then Cherry Tavern again because Francis left his phone there. We did baby shots at every bar. The Blue Lounge, Up the North, Chat & Business. I was sobering up again from the walking, the seeing no one, the scoring of nothing. It was getting me down. It was like the daze I’d been in since Vicki walked out on me a year, two months, and a week ago. I hadn’t even fucked anyone. I’d gotten coy a couple times and put my hand on a boob when it would be rude not to, but my heart, and correspondingly my cock, was never in it. My camera was either on my shelf or in my desk, I hadn’t taken it out since I’d moved. I didn’t see any sparks and if I had, I figured it was for someone else to capture. If I just got Vicki back, I knew I could attain flight. She’d always had notes around the apartment, stated goals like, The world is what you make of it, so make it beautiful, and, Break the chains of “no.” I wanted to be caught in her headwinds and propelled forward with her. When we were together, we put our groceries and rent on her parents’ credit card and spent my tip money on drinks and karaoke parties where I didn’t sing. I broke my long-standing rule of No flasks at the bar (bartender’s dictum: Don’t bring sand to the beach) with Vicki because her job of mixing and mingling, now that Paper was giving her regular assignments, required so much time in bathrooms, not even doing drugs, just talking with promotors and photo editors under the unisex toilet lights. Aviva and I had spent long hours in bathrooms too, but always just the two of us, talking out the night’s misunderstanding or slights. Aviva kept tight focus on our finances. If we were broke and couldn’t tip on free drinks, we stayed home. Aviva didn’t provide spiritual encouragement, just deadlines. For a while I’d liked that—Aviva respected me and had high expectations. But I always knew I would fail her, like my dad had failed my mom; I figured I’d been kinder than him by getting out when we were only married and there were no kids to fuck up.

  I needed to find Vicki. It was the only reasonable solution for everybody. We had no leads. I was getting panicky. I was hungry too. While Francis haggled with a homeless woman wearing a sweater that said, There’s more to me than what you see . . . Respect me! I ran into Ray’s Famous and grabbed two slices. When I got out, I was pretty sure Francis still hadn’t given her money, so I gave her my change and marched him along; he waved away the bite I offered.

  Francis said, “I hate to confuse my body by mixing. Plus . . . I had Cosmic Brownies.”

  The Package unashamedly spelled out its name in neon, along with an image of two extremely large hands gripping an equally large box at crotch level.

  The naming of a gay bar seemed simple on the surface. The gay bars on the west side had generic enough names. Even the Stonewall, deprived of context, could be Scottish or, hell, Confederate. If you were in the West Village and the bar wasn’t full of college students, you could safely assume it was a gay bar, even if it was named The Elderly Straight. Uptown and Midtown—past Chelsea, obviously—there were no gay bars as far as I knew because up there gays stayed in their nice apartments playing piano. But in the East Village and LES, the names had to be as crass as possible: the Hole, White Swallow, the Cock, the Fat Cock, the Gaping Asshole. Gay bars with ambiguous names attracted too many yuppies and single women. The single women went to them ostensibly to avoid being hassled and the bros followed, presumably on some Tucker Max genetic memory of how to pull strange in the most obnoxious way. It was a vicious cycle that the short-shorts and leather crowd wanted no part of.

  There was a beefy door guy but he knew us or guys who looked like us and let us pass. The sign on the door said, Please Respect Our Neighbors. No Shrieking or Loud Groping. Thank You. There was another sign below it, designating the Package as a drug-free bar. That raised our spirits. It meant the place was on the local precinct’s radar, and that we’d have no problem getting Francis what he needed.

  We punctured the pitch-black entry hallway and drew back a thick red curtain. The bar was half-full, but the puttering smoke machine made distances strange. You could see faces, but furniture was so foggy that drinks seemed to be floating on clouds, with hands coming in and out of the mist. There was a short bar that could fit one bartender comfortably, so there were, of course, two. They’d removed their shirts to make room. They were both chiseled and taut. The violence of their physiques clashed with the sweetness of their faces.

  Aviva, my former wife, was dancing on the bar with a man dressed as a sailor.

  Dancing is maybe the wrong word. It was more a rhythmic stomping of her black high heels, synchronized with a heavy-metal-thunder throwing-back-and-forth of hair. She’d always loved Depeche Mode and she’d always loved spilling drinks, so the combination of two of her interests didn’t shock me. No one seemed perturbed. The boys appreciated a good time when they saw it. It wasn’t a Coyote Ugly sexy dance, she was just doing her thing—in this case, atop a bar.

  I cupped my hands and shouted above “Personal Jesus”: “I consider it a personal favor that you’re wearing panties!”

  She gave me both fingers.

  Francis yelled, “I don’t! Aviva! Hey!”

  She blew him a kiss.

  What the fuck was that? I smacked Francis on the back of the head. He didn’t seem to feel it.

  Francis raised his hand to order drinks. I smacked that down too. We had a mission within our mission and I wanted to stay true to that. Francis rubbed his wrist and scowled, but he knew I was right. We had to maintain an even keel. It would do no one any good for us to end up in a bathroom discussing nineties hardcore bands at each other. It would be four a.m. in just a few hours.

  Francis said. “Right, you see anyone?”

  “I don’t know anyone here.”

  “Maybe the dancing queen?”

  “Which one?”

  “Don’t be a homophobe, Sam. It’s confusing.”

  “We’re not asking her. I don’t want to get into a thing with her.”

  I gave him a look I’d been giving him for years, and he put a little more effort into not looking up her skirt.

  I had to admit, she looked quite okay against the damask wallpaper. I didn’t think about her dancing partner. He was just a man dancing with my former wife on the bar. It happened.

  Francis came back from the bathroom and pointed, less subtly then I would have liked, at a man who was 6'6", crew cut, wearing a below-the-waist leather coat and baggy pants. “He told me my shirt was cool and called me chief!”

  Francis was drunk. This was 101 stuff. A guy that large has to be a cop or a dealer. They’ll both call you chief, big guys get away with that, but only narcs are friendly to strangers. There is the occasional friendly drug dealer. He will be selling you baby laxative and ground-up oregano.

  “Francis, keep it together, I want to find Vicki. I can feel Aviva’s eyes drilling holes into the back of my head.”

  “Well, first of all, nobody is looking at you at all. Nobody cares. And secondly, I’m working on it
! I just thought you’d enjoy my keen sense of detection. I am a boy detective! A boyish defective!” Francis went up on his tiptoes. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding. “And thirdly, Sam, enough about Vicki, that’s all you ever talk about!”

  “Fuck you, dude. I haven’t mentioned Vicki in months! I’ve been so stoic because I didn’t want to be a bum-out.”

  “But you were a bum-out. Your face is a telegram; it’s the fucking Pony Express.”

  “Fuck you a million times! I didn’t say shit. And now I need help and you’re being fucked up and unhelpful.”

  “You’re talking about her so much it’s becoming a chore.”

  “Francis . . .”

  “No, Sam. You’ve been boring the shit out of everyone with your unspoken complaining, even before this. You were talking about Vicki by not talking about her. You were talking about her by pouting whenever anyone else was having fun. You were talking about her by insisting that staff pay for drinks. You were talking about her by making us leave the bar by four thirty. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? It’s been bumming everyone out. They were going to have an intervention. I told them not to!” Francis was poking me hard in the chest, and then he stopped. Something by the pinball machine had caught his eye. He grabbed my arm and shoved through the crowd.

  There were two men there. One short and old, one tall and young. The old one was holding poppers up to the young one’s nose. They looked familiar. I was pretty sure I’d carded the young one before.

  They greeted Francis with wan smiles.

  The young one was wearing a shirt that read, Punks Throw Rocks at Cops. He looked at me like I was wallpaper. “Hey, Francis,” he said. “You look like shit.” He motioned at me. “Your friend carded me once.”

  “Good thing you only come in when I’m working then, huh, Marlo? Sam, this is Marlo and Chicken Wing. If you carded Marlo, could you please apologize?”

  “Of course. Great to meet you. Sorry. May I ask how old you are?”

  Francis winced but Marlo smiled.