A week ago Pip announced she was throwing an incredible quadruple Gemini birthday party at Kim and Kyle Davis' apartment on Bleecker Street. Sean, Eric, and Kim had hung blue and white balloons overhead. Sean, an movie set designer, had decorated her apartment. plastered xeroxed photos of the four natal celebrants on the wall and lit the living room with pulsing blue lights. Punk and funk music. Beer and bourbon. Tons of people. She one. Me one too. Her best friend Cyrena and a heartthrob, Amos. She invited two hundred people. That night over a hundred crammed into the duplex. I knew many of them.
A ballerina said, "I saw you on 42nd Street. You entered a peep show with a blonde. Do you like porno? Would you like to see me naked?"
"Yes."
By the bathroom door, Alice entertained lithe lesbian actresses with a funy spiel about the poetry police. I had heard it a couple of times. Normally, as she gets drunk. The ballerina led me out of the apartment in a slow-motion pas de deux into the stairwell. Her name is Dove. She tells me to keep my distance. I nodded, although my hands want to rip off her dress. She smiled at my distress and peeled the dress from her shoulders, as if under George Balanchine's direction. It fell to her feet. Her body was emaciated by dance, revealing every sinew, muscle, and bone.
"My name is Dove. One day if we're lucky, we will fuck." Her hand drifted elegantly to her crotch and rubbed her labia, then licked her fingertips. She didn't offer them to me, and I realized she was baiting me to take her against her will. It wasn't the first time a woman to misinterpret my innate propensity for violence as sexual.
"Like you said. Not tonight."
I returned to the party.
ANARCHY IN THE UK blasted on the stereo. Kyle chatted with Billy from Television. She is so in love with the drummer and couldn't be happier with his attention solely hers.
Excessive enters and shouts, "Now the party begins."
“I love him.”
X starts an argument with a bassist from the Testors. I step in.
"It's a party, and if anyone is going to start a brawl, it's me. I'm one of the birthday people."
We spoke for a few minutes and somehow I diverted the two of us into a ballad of loneliness.
"Oh, wow. Not easy to be alone with this many people here for your birthday."
"Easier than you think."
I went over to Alice.
"Ignore me."
She drank a slug of 101-proof bourbon, then silked away to hillbilly dance with Barbara, another lesbian, returning to the bathroom to extoll the virtues of hard drinking to those waiting for a piss. She was very funny. even the partygoers inside the toilet laughed at her humor.
Kim gets drunk with Marc Stevens, Mr 10 1/2 of porno fame. He whispers he wants to talk with me.
"Later." I glanced at his crotch and he smiled like to say it's all there.
Patrick, the cook from Elephant and Castle, shows up with a bottle of bourbon. I don't know how it became the drink of the party. He hands me a manifesto for the National Resurgence Party, which I promptly lose.
Ro shows up. I'm too drunk to form sentences. We score some speed, but a popular solo singer steals half. Cyrena get her photo taken by Sean and his father. Roz shows as does William Lively and Andy Reese, then Clover. Alone, Blonde, Young. We spoke in the hallway, "I haven't been avoiding you. My Texan sponsor is in town. He leaves tomorrow."
Amos, Kim's love, is drunk and leans against the wall supported by wobbly knees.
Ann makes out with Excessive, who pukes and I have to sober him up in the kitchen with a bump of speed. Bruce and Lewis enter with gifts of a tie and hankercheif. Klaus comes with Claudia. Dark and mysterious in leather. I say nothing to her. Little John is drunk.
Kim's Greenwich friends become invisible. The bourbon has blurred everyone's vision and stripped away their inhibitions to the bone. It is the height of the Sexual Revolution and we are all rebels with a cause of flesh to flesh. Rhonda makes move on Alice. Anthony stands close as a voyeur, wishing he had been camera back from the repair shop. I speak to Sean about film and anarchy. Markey from the Ghosts has not stop dancing. Sweat flies off his body to UP BONDAGE UP YOURS. Rick Danger loses his leather jacket. Someone stole it. Marc invites me over to his apartment for some blow. He takes out his cock. Long and thick and not hard at all.
"Touch it, " he says, as if it was a pet snake.
His girlfriend, Jill Monro, enters the apartment.
We do some more lines and she hefts his limp cock.
"He does blow and he's useless in bed. Sweet, but useless."
I go back to the party. Eric is making out with a girl whose name I can't recall. It is not Alice.
"How big was it?" Klaus licks his lips.
"Go over and ask. I'm sure he'll show it to you."
He brings Andy Reese with him.
Clover and I kiss in the stairwell.
"One day you and me."
"What about now?" I know she wants me to have my way with her.
"One day."
Not tonight.
Alice hasn't spoke a word to me in hours. She's kissing one of the Greenwich girls.
The lights go out. A blown fuse. We light candles The beer runs out, so does the ice. We find R&B music on a transistor radio. We have plenty of bourbon. Creeps from CBGBs arrived at the door. I tell them to fuck off. William Lively cries when I refuse him. People puke over the railing in groups of two and three. Cyrena leaves with someone other than Sean. Alice is out cold on the couch. Kim and Amos are on the floor. There is no sign of Kyle or Billy. I bring back Alice to her sublet. I put her to bed and she slurs, "I wish you were David Bowie."
“I heard Mr. 10 and a Half is coming,” Klaus whispered in my ear. The German opera singer was a fiend for size and he shivered saying, “10 and a half. Divine.”
Klaus critiqued gay porno films, as if he was voting for the XXX Oscars. He love going to the Adonis THeater on Eighth Avenue. Never missed a new film. My hillbilly girlfriend wandered off to CBGBs to see the Mumps. Alice didn’t like drinking and liked me drunk less. A minute later, a curly-haired man came up to me. He was Marc Stevens and he said, “I thought she would never leave. My name is Marc.”
“Pip mentioned you.” I looked through the crowd. His better half wasn’t in the room.
“She mentioned you too. Her brother.” Marc wore a white jumpsuit. He was the thinnest person in the room. His hand touched my ass. “You want to do some blow?”
“Yes.”
I was as used to gay guys hitting on me as they were accustomed to seducing straight guys. To them, they considered everyone potentially gay. No one was 100% straight.
“Not here. There are too many coke vultures.” His soft brown eyes darted over the crowd, as if he were looking for someone special. “Let’s go to my place.”
Two men leaving a party together was no scandal. Pip leaned over to Klaus and pointed out my departure. The singer gave me the green light with a wink and shouted, “Gluck.”
“I don’t need good luck.” I was straight or at least that’s what I told myself, but everyone in the Village was a little bent in one way or another.
“Your friend is cute in a strange way.”
“Klaus likes you.”
“All size queens desire Mr. 10 and a Half.”
“I bet they do.” I had seen nudes of him in Swedish Erotica, the best straight magazine in Times Square’s porno shops. He was big. Not John Holmes big, but big.
Marc tiptoed down the hall.
“I don’t want any of the neighbors seeing us. They are busybodies. Always peeking through the peepholes. Like this hallway was in a porno movie. My wife is very jealous.” He opened the door and pushed me inside.
“My girlfriend is never jealous.” She didn't have a jealous bone in her body, as if our together was just killing time, until she met David Bowie.
“Everyone is jealous. I don’t believe she isn’t. Not about you. Sex is just sex. Nothing more.”
Marc shut the door. The one-bedroom apartment was decorated with dark brown furniture favored by gays for hiding stains from intercourse. The XXX actor went into the kitchen to fetch a Pond’s cream jar from the cabinet. I thought this was going too fast, but he opened the jar filled a white powder with a pinkish glow.
“Bolivian flake from one of my admirers.”
"I've never tried it." I had only heard of it
"You'll love it."
We sat on the soft module sofa. The cushions wrapped around me like a Venus Fly Trap. The music from Pip’s party thumped the wall. I recognized the song as X-Ray Spex’s UP BONDAGE UP YOURS.
“You like that music?” Marc spilled out a mound of blow. Lines thick as rope.
“I’m a punk.” I had been since seeing the Ramones play CALIFORNIA SUN in the winter of 1976. Their speedy version of the Rivieras’ hit opened my eyes to a new world and CBGBs became my second home.
“I like leather, but not that music. I’m more into disco.”
He unzipped his jumpsuit to his belly button and handed me a straw. “Enjoy.”
I huffed the first rail. This was not street gear, and the coke burst into my nasal capillaries with the intensity of an Incan sunrise, then scorched through my veins with an avalanche of euphoria. I fell back into the sofa with my bones sizzling on Andes Barbeque.
“Good, huh,” Marc whispered in my ear. His lips were tender on my earlobe. He spooned a small pile into my other nostril. “Breathe.”
I obeyed his command. The coca sizzled my senses. I heard motorcycles running on my blood and the universe shimmered out of focus. I was in no condition to resist Marc’s advances. He undid his zipper. Out flopped his cock.
He was a veteran of porno movies. Millions of XXX viewers had seen him in MICHAEL, ANGELO, AND DAVID. Hundreds of thousands wanted him. I gripped his thick member with the tenderness of a butcher preparing to cut a steak. The photographer Robert Mapplethorpe had immortalized this penis in a black- and-white shirt titled MARC STEVENS MR. 10 and a Half, 1976. I gave it a squeeze.
“It’s not hard.”
“Rough trade gets me erect.”
Marc’s admission was not a confession, but a request. I pinched his nipple and his cock stiffened with a throb.
“I like being the queen,” murmured Marc. “You wanna be king?”
He undid my jeans. My cock was semi-hard.
"I think we did too much blow.”
“Or not enough.”
Keys turned the lock of the front door. The actor sat up straight and zipped his jumpsuit.
“It’s my wife. Do some more blow.”
I snapped out of my trance and zipped my jeans. A statuesque brunette entering the apartment had a couple inches on us in her stiletto heels. She regarded the coke and then the two of us. Her smile held none of the unease of seeing her man with another man. Marc introduced us.
“Jill, please to meet you.” His wife held out her hand with a tilted wrist.
I offered mine, expecting a limp handshake. Jill crunched my knuckles in a vise. Marc was her man. I winced with a pained grin and ripped my fingers loose.
“I
met him at the party next door. It was fun.”
“I can see that.” Jill sat down with the surrender of accepting Marc for what he was.
“Nice meeting you too. Time for me to rejoin the party.”
“Leaving so soon?” Marc was in no position to pursue his desire.
“It’s getting late.”
“Thanks for coming.” Jill smirked with the pleasure of re-establishing her dominance over my host.
“Sure, just one more thing.”
“What?” Jill straightened her posture, as if she was ready for a fight.
“A good-bye gift.” I bent over and snorted the other two lines within two seconds.
“Thanks," Marc laughed and Jill joined him.
“Sure you want to leave?” She spread her legs to invite a touch. She was a sexual adventurer like all of us in the Sexual Revolution.
“I already have a lover.”
“Lucky girl.” Jill kissed Marc on the cheek. “Same as me.”
He spilled out more blow. She delicately bowed her head to inhale her first line. They looked like such a nice couple. I returned to the party. Pip grabbed me.
“What happened?”
“His wife came home.”
I poured myself a vodka. There was no ice left.
“And what were you doing?”
“Talking that’s all. I have a girlfriend.” Pip was a spy for my hillbilly girlfriend. They were good friends. All men were the enemy.
“And I’m not gay.”
“And you’re not straight either.” Pip shrugged with disappointment. She had been all ears for some good dirt, but left me to flirt with the Ghosts' young guitarist. I stayed for another hour. The coke ran its course. Klaus lived in the East Village. We shared a taxi to St. Mark’s Place.
“So how big was it?” The German was all ears. “Have you seen his movies?”
I could tell Klaus anything. He loved keeping secrets.
“Yes.” His eyes widened with delight.
“It was that big and thick.” I didn’t comment on the softness of his penis. “Wunderbar.”
“He said you were cute.”
“Really?”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky one night.”
“I can only wished and hope.”
“Klaus dropped me on St. Mark’s. I walked to 10th Street.
My hillbilly girlfriend was asleep in our bed. I took off my clothes and slid next to her. After all the cocaine, I doubts, if I could fall asleep.
“How was it?”
“What?”
“Mr. 10 and a Half.” The phone was by the bed. Pip must have called her. “Big and thick.”
“Too big for me?”
Yes.”
“And you?”
“I went strictly there for a look-see. I came, I touched, I went.”
She was a good actress to pretend that she believed me and I didn’t mention the temptation. She was strictly GP-13 and I fell into a wired maze of dreams. None of them were XXX and that was probably better for Alice. Better for me too, because 10 inches was as a big penis in dreams as it was in real life and Mr. Ten and a Half even more so.
Klaus and me at the party. Foto by Kim Davis.
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