CHAPTER ONEBaby Steps
Hey, birthday boy―you lost?”
I turned from the dance floor and
there he was―another clone―baby-faced, blond, shirtless, and muscular. He
smiled affably, waiting for an answer. I had met him half a dozen times and
should have known his name. But I didn’t. I bought myself some time. “Lost? As
in, am I having an existential crisis? Feeling morally and spiritually
bankrupt?”
He raised one eyebrow. “As in, are you
so fucked up you lost your wife and friends on the dance floor?”
“Yes.”
“Then, let’s finish the job.” He
patted his pocket. “Got a little something-something right here.”
I gave up on remembering his name and,
instead, considered his offer. The ecstasy had all but worn off; only the
slightest tinge remained, soon to be replaced entirely by utter exhaustion.
“Are you implying I need it?” I asked.
He nodded. “Way too serious for the
occasion.”
I looked out over the packed dance
floor. Tomorrow was my birthday. What is that thing Rachael always said? “More
is more.” Besides, this was Saturday night of Pride weekend in New York City,
and no one was going anywhere for a long, long while.
I smiled. “Awfully generous of you.”
He reached into the front pocket of
his jeans and removed the bullet-shaped snuff-snorter attached to a large vial,
nearly full of white powder. He gave the bullet a backwards-forwards twist,
filling the chamber, and brought it up to my nostril. I inhaled deeply and
jerked my head back as it slammed against my sinuses. A chemically tinged
sweetness with a hint of vanilla drained down my throat.
“Thanks.” I rubbed my nose. “I think.”
Now I remembered this guy’s name and
reputation. Michael Murray―The Ketamine Kid―was notorious for treating his K
like a precious commodity, spending hours chopping it up so finely it blasted
into your bloodstream like a blitzkrieg, sweetening the assault with a little
vanilla extract. Michael did some minor-league dealing but was as proud of his
handicraft as any artisan, frequently offering up free samples to the
unsuspecting.
“Five minutes to blast off,” I said.
“It’s not for nothing they call it
tripping, my man.” He administered himself one hit, and then another. Michael
leaned forward, palms down, resting his weight on the railing which ran the
length of Palladium’s mezzanine. He looked on, proud as a lord surveying his
land.
The crowd was packed chest-to-chest―a
mass of color shifting with the music:
red to green to white. After several hours of dancing and layering on
drugs like stacks of firewood, everyone was settling in for the long
haul―distance runners catching a second wind.
“Hey, Michael,” I said, “remember the
days when we used to do one hit of X, be home in bed by four a.m., and that was
enough?”
Michael clicked his tongue. “Vaguely.”
The lights flashed bright.
He tapped my shoulder. “Come on now,
don’t get nostalgic on me. Go home before dawn? Might as well stay home. Junior
doesn’t get serious until the sun comes up.”
He had a point. The music was potent
force, especially when delivered by deejay Junior Vasquez: club icon, protégé
of Madonna, and volatile diva in his own right. His specialty was blending
songs and beats, wrapping them in nearly sub-sonic bass, and slamming them down
on the crowd like a giant, percussive fist. It was the soundtrack to insanity,
as powerful as any drug.
The music and lights synchronized and
began another slow build up, a single snare drum snapping slow eighth notes,
increasing tempo, faster and faster, measure after measure, blending to a blur
of sound and light, bursting to a new plateau, the base line ripped, the crowd
screamed, leapt, reached for the sky. The hair on my arms and the back of my
neck rose. Every sense was overloaded, overwhelmed. There it was. Everything
was brilliant, joyous, connected. The X staged a slight comeback, filling me
with warmth and euphoria.
“See what I mean?” Michael yelled. He
waved one hand over his head and spun around, dervish-like.
The house lights spun wildly on dozens
of crisscrossed aluminum trusses and descended from far above us to rest just
above the tallest dancers. Thin strands of green lasers fanned out from each
side of the club, tracing broad, slashing vertical arcs. At each corner of the
dance floor, muscular go-go boys mounted four floodlit six-foot square black
boxes and begin to sway, detached and blasé, as the crowd swirled below them.
Spectacle―no one delivered it like the
boys.
“By the way,” Michael said. “You’d
better sit your ass down somewhere, and soon.” He leaned over and planted a
kiss on my cheek. “Happy birthday.”
I wiped the wet spot with my palm and
watched Michael navigate the crowded steps leading down to the dance floor on
steady legs, impressive, considering he had done enough K to bring down a
wildebeest.
It wouldn’t be long before I got
nailed like a sharp right cross. I looked around for Rachael, beginning at the
center of the dance floor though I knew it was unlikely I’d find her there.
That space―downtown―was generally staked out by the largest, highest and
horniest boys. Tonight was no exception. Dozens of them had formed a tight,
groping conga line, spiraling out from the center like a constellation. Women
were not welcomed downtown, not even Rachael.
Then I spotted her. Black
patent-leather combat boots, white leather hot pants, and a studded black
leather bra top. Her dark mane of hair was arranged the way I liked it
best: pulled back, exposing the full
lips, dark eyes, brilliant smile. She and Trevor were deep in conversation,
oblivious to the two-story bank of speakers pounding out the music just above
their heads. Rachael bent forward, convulsed with laughter. Trevor spotted me
over Rachael’s shoulder, spun her around and, using the cocktail in his left
hand, pointed up in my direction. They smiled and waved for me to come down.
That’s when the dance floor fractured
into angular splinters of color, then reformed into a crystalline carousel,
spinning clockwise like a constellation. I closed my eyes and imagined
individual particles of ketamine teaming up with the ecstasy, careening through
my nervous system like a frenzied Pac Man. My eyes opened to find that
Palladium had been filled with automobile-sized fluffy pom-pom balls made of
cotton and anthracite. I reached for the mezzanine’s railing to steady myself,
and, instead, grasped air. Down on the dance floor, bodies were tinged with
spectacular auras of orange and cobalt. The music cracked, sending sparks
flying from the ceiling in neon shards. Sound faded to a muffled thump, and I
was aware of a heartbeat rumbling through my body, down to the dance floor,
through the walls up to the ceiling and catapulting straight up to the sky.
I was on the move, an occurrence which vexed
me, because I couldn’t feel my legs, much less imagine them capable of
propulsion. Yet there was no denying the slight rush of air past my face and
the flash of smiles and shadows of those I passed. I felt pressure on my arm,
glanced down to see a hand clutched to it, just above my elbow. I was being led
along by a disembodied hand, which I found oddly comforting.
I arrived before a gold-beaded
entranceway. Before me stood an enormous pale man with a shaved head and a
tattoo which ran the entire length of his left arm. His face was emblazoned
with jagged Maori warrior tattoos. I blinked and they were gone. Something took
hold of my wrist and turned it so the big man could inspect. I sensed that this
was someone in authority, someone with the ability to make or break my
evening―not to mention my arm. I straightened my back and willed myself to
focus.
“K or G?” asked the big man, who still
had hold of my wrist. The tattoo on his arm, the head of a phoenix rising from
the ashes, throbbed to the beat of the music.
I opened my mouth to answer, but from
behind me a voice something like mine said, “It’s K. He’ll be fine.”
I had become a ventriloquist.
The big man said, “Better be. This is
a lounge, not a frickin’ emergency room.”
“No prob-le-mo,” I said. “I’m
ab-so-lu―” I stuck on the third syllable, partly because of the K, but mostly
because I was surprised by the reemergence of my voice from my own throat. I
needed to learn how to harness the power of my new-found skill. I tried to give
the big man a casual, reassuring thumb up, but there was a good chance the
gesture I made looked more like late-stage Parkinson’s disease. I wracked my
brain for something to say to set him at ease, something casual, but not glib. I
laid a Clint Eastwood squint on him, grinned, and pointed both fingers at him
as if firing pistols.
He grunted and released my arm. I
glided forward and pushed through the beads, which drew themselves across my
neck and shoulders like a quilt made of marbles. There I went again, sliding
along, a puck on ice, closing in on a padded silver lame banquette coming up
hard on my right. Now, the hand was on my left forearm, guiding me like a truck
backing into a loading dock. I flopped down and backwards, grateful for the
banquette’s generous padding. The table-top’s polished surface swirled and
coiled.
“Stay here,” the voice said.
“No prob-le-mo,” I said.
The silhouette laughed and
disappeared.
Funny thing about K―one second, you’re
in the spin cycle, the next, you’ve materialized, as if through the transporter
on the Enterprise.
The lounge was dim, long and narrow,
the walls black and lined with banquettes. At the far end of the room was the
deejay booth, the occupant of which was laying it down, softened and sinuous,
nothing like Junior’s take-no-prisoners assault. The laid-back sound and gentle
lighting soften up what was left of my high.
Knots of men and a few women were
clustered together at the banquettes, talking, and smoking cigarettes. I looked
around to see if anyone had noticed my spastic tightrope act, but no one seemed
to be paying the slightest attention.
As if to prove the point, a sinewy,
black form appeared from the back of the room. She was all legs and lanky arms
as she glided past. The five-inch stiletto heels were a bit much, but they were
a look. She wore a short, black leather miniskirt, bustier, and a long,
straight, onyx-colored wig. The center of the VIP lounge was her runway, and
she was working it hard. Hands on hips, the perfect combination of nonchalance
and attitude, she shot past me trailing the scent of sweet perfume.
There was a little hitch in her walk.
The heel of her right shoe was loose at the point it attached to the sole. Her
Achilles heel. My clever little allusion made me smile. She paused a moment,
pivoted her body, and whipped her head around last, just like fashion week in
Paris. We locked eyes, just long enough for her to give me a knowing grin. I closed
my eyes and watched her image flick and skip forward like a snippet of old
film. When I opened them, she was next to me, sliding into the banquette,
trapping me against the wall. She smiled, revealing a confusing assortment of
teeth.
“Having fun, Papi?” The illusion was
shattered. Her voice was Brooklyn, Queens, Puerto Rico with a slight overlay of
Telly Savalas.
“Maybe too much,” I said. The full force of
her perfume hit me like a whiff from a broken ammonia ampoule.
“Been to this little soiree before?”
I sighed, trying to sound blasé. “My
second. And you?”
Her laugh rumbled. “Papi, she’s a
circuit girl through and through.”
Why did drag queens refer to
themselves in the third person? And why did they always call me Papi?
“This is my sixth,” she said.
I tried to look suitably impressed.
“Saw you come in,” she said. “You was
in quite a state, Papi.”
I set her up for the winner. “I’d
rather be in your state.”
“Which is?”
“Fabulous.”
“Mmmm-hhhhhhmmm, honey, what-eva.” She
waved me off, but I could tell she dug it. She slid a couple of inches closer
to me. “What’s your name?” Her big, liquid eyes shifted to my chest.
“I thought we decided I’m Papi.”
She gave me that husky laugh again.
“I’m Bianca,” she said, suddenly earnest, like a well-mannered eight-year-old
meeting her daddy’s boss. She extended her hand, dangling from her narrow
wrist.
I touched her hand, and it was all I
could do not to jerk mine back. Her fingers were cold and wiry and trembled
like the claw of a terrified bird.
“What you doing here alone?” she
asked.
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Bianca’s heard everything, trust
her.”
“Trust me, Bianca. You haven’t.”
Her Adam’s apple quivered. She placed
her hand on my forearm. “Boyfriend trouble?”
I shook my head no.
“Trouble, though.”
“I think you’re barking up the wrong
Papi.”
She took my hand in hers and turned it
over, leaned forward, and traced one fingernail across my palm. “Ever since I
was little, my momma told me I could see things.” Her voice was softer now,
gentle, and less affected. “She was right.”
I shook my head to clear it. Either I
was still high as hell or there was something to her. Either way, nothing to
lose. I spread my fingers.
My hand hovered inches below her face.
Bianca reached across the table and brought over a glass votive, pinched
between her slender, dark fingers. She cocked her head. “What’s going on,
Papi?”
She knew something. Not everything,
but something.
“I’m here. Same as you.”
She closed her eyes. A shadow skipped
across the table. “Not the same. I belong.”
I smiled. “Hey, I paid my cover.”
She studied my face and squinted, as
though peering through fog. My smile vanished. “How’d you get here?”
“Took a cab. You?”
She squeezed my hand. “Stop playing.
Tell me.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Try making it short.”
“How does anybody get anywhere. Baby
steps.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You have to walk before you can run.”
She looked me over. “You runnin’ now,
ain’t you?” She smiled and shook her head. “Talkin’ in riddles. Chasing
something, like one of them little ducks at the park hustling after their
momma.”
Neither the notion nor the image sat
well with me. I yanked my hand away from Bianca and pressed my palm onto the
tabletop. “This is some crazy talk for the VIP room at Palladium.”
“Yes it is.” She shifted herself away
from me. “But there’s one thing Bianca knows, Papi.”
“What’s that?”
“You need to back yourself up and get
on out of here.”
I grinned. “Something I said?”
She placed her index and middle finger
on my forehead. My skin tingled beneath her touch. “Something you didn’t say.
And those little baby steps? They ain’t going to work. It’s going to take some
big-ass strides to get you where you belong.”
I wanted to say something funny but
couldn’t think of a single thing.
Bianca slid away from me. “You’ll
excuse me, Papi. The diva is calling.” She stood and smoothed the front of her
skirt with her hands. “I’m sure you understand.”
She did a pirouette and disappeared.
I sat there, rubbing my thighs with my
palms. What was that all about? Here I was, sitting smack in the middle of the
gayest scene in the world, dressed the part: shirtless, shaved chest, tattoos,
leather pants, long hair, drug paraphernalia crammed into every pocket. Why
would she think I didn’t belong?
“No prob-le-mo?” a voice said. “That
the best you could come up with?”
Rachael stood next to me. I should
have been relieved to see her, but I wasn’t. “So, I’m not a wordsmith,” I said.
“I sent Wes to fetch you. He said you were in
no condition to be fetched.”
“I’m fine.”
All four people in the next banquette
had turned around to stare at Rachael and make admiring comments.
“You look rattled,” she said.
I was entitled. After all, it wasn’t
every day I had a mystical connection with a psychic drag queen.
Bianca clomped by and winked. I was
relieved she didn’t stop to chat. Snide momma-duck references would not have
gone over big with Rachael.
“Who’s your friend?” she asked.
“Bianca. Odd girl.” Bianca paused at
the next table, permitting her hand to be kissed with great formality by a
shirtless man in skin-tight black patent leather pants.
Rachael pushed the hair out of my
eyes. “So, are you feeling better? Everyone’s asking where you’ve been hiding out.”
This was one duckling that wasn’t
going to be rounded up just yet. “I doubt anyone even noticed I’m gone.”
Rachael frowned, her strategy
derailed. “Okay, I’d like you to come down with me and start enjoying your
birthday.” She slid onto my lap and put an arm over my shoulder. I wrapped my
arms around her, feeling resentful.
“Really,” she said, “you don’t want to
sit up here all alone, do you? Just you and Binaca?”
“It’s Bianca. Binaca’s a breath
freshener.”
“Come on, Nicky, don’t leave me alone
on your birthday.”
At least she was being honest. Except
for the part about using my birthday to guilt me into doing what she wanted.
Rachael slid off and tugged on my hand
to follow her. I did, and with her hands holding mine to her shoulders, allowed
her to lead me towards the exit. I took small, mincing steps so as not to mash
her heels.
“Baby steps,” I said.
Rachael turned part way around.
“What?”
“Something Bianca and I were
discussing.”
“That girl is a bad influence.”
I nudged her forward, thinking about
how it was I got here, and, for the first time, wondering what it might take to
get out.
