Palm Beach Sunday 2008

In April 2008 I lived nowhere. My apartment in the East Village had been taken over by the faceless management company. I had lived with my wife and daughter in Pattaya until this April. We had had good times and bad times. It was home, then again I considered anyplace home once you buy a roll of toilet paper. I had been sad to leave, but my January arrest by the Thai cyber-crime police had necessitated a change in employment.

My wife and I discussed the options.

Teaching English in Thailand paid little. At tops 20,000-30000 baht per month.

My friend Lisa in Palm Beach listened to my story over the phone and said, "You can come here. I have a house for you to take care of. It's a little money, but you can get a start." Palm Beach in the middle of a recession seemed a good destination and I kissed my wife and daughter good-bye at the Bangkok airport. I had no idea when we might see each other again. The flight was long. I stayed in New York three weeks and then headed south to Palm Beach. Lisa greeted me at the airport. At fifty-five I was almost the youngest male passenger in the terminal.

"Good to see you." Lisa gave me a hug.

"Thanks for having me."

"No problems, just remember it's low season." Low season meant the rich had vacated Palm Beach for more temperate climates; the Hamptons, Duchess County, Tuscany, Switzerland, the south of France, and the more tony zipcodes of New England. "I'm not going anywhere, because I'm broke."

I had $200 in my pocket.

That evening I sent my wife half and my mistress half. Mem will be having my baby in July. I took over a house near Donald Trump's Mar-o-Lago. My job required walking the owners' Airedale. She was a crazy dog. My only social contact here was Lisa and her son Kris. They were bunkered down at her villa on Chilean Place. We watched Euro Football 2008 together, cheering on France, which didn't make the knock-out round. Life was simple. Beach. Walk Pom Pom. Go for a swim on the empty beach. Write my novel about teenage devil worship in the 1960s, eat lunch with Lisa and her loving son Krys, drink beer, then a bottle of cheap wine in the evening. Few tourists ventured this far south on the beach. too many mansions. Better that way for Pom pom, but I craved more humanity and Palm Beach ran short of that commodity any time of the year.

My friend Bruce lived in Miami Beach. Normally the writer resided was in the East Village, however he had rented out his flat to support a life in Florida. I called and invited him up to Palm Beach.

"I'd love to come up." Bruce wrote stories about his sexual adventures with young foreign men. His last book won the Prix de Flore in France. The French had toasted him at Cafe de Flores. He was considered a young artist. Bruce was a little older than me and the mirror loses its youth juice after 50. We both only regarded out shadows at sunset.

"And I'll bring some friends. Two Romanian writers and a young New York one, I think you met at my party." Bruce had hosted a party in honor of a French artist in early May. I couldn't recall the name.

"Young man."

"In his 20s."

"Too old for you."

"Fresh."

My directions were simple. Up I-95 and turn toward the ocean at US 98 after. That Sunday they arrived in a rental car. Bruce was the first out of the car. The writer wore knee-high black sox and a Romanian soccer uniform anonymously tailored by machines to flatter his XXL frame. "Stop staring at the sox. They hide my varicose veins. Yes, even gods get old."

He introduced his friends. The Romanians were my age, however Glenn was a youth. Gay too, but not in that horrible steroid Chelsea gay way.

He shaking my hand and introduced his friends. "Scottie and his wife, Sylvia. They are the best people. Glenn's my slave,"

I idn't ask for an explanation and escorted my guests inside the house. They were impressed by the swimming pool and scared by Pom Pom. She growled a little too easily to be kidding around and I warned them to keep their distance. She snapped at Bruce, until I whispered our secret command.

"Darling, you didn't tell me the mansion had a monster dog."

"Pom Pom is a little crazy."

"Crazy? She tried to bit off my asscheek. Would have had it too if I wasn't so athletic."

"More vicious than crazy."

"Vicious, hah." Bruce was fearless. "I spend twenty years with hustlers on 42nd Street. I know how to deal with tough."

He tamed Pom pom with a slice of cheese. The big dog begged at his side the rest of the day. We concocted a dinner out of my left-overs; pasta, carrotte rapee, toast with cheese. Wine was our drink of choice. Bruce whispered his desires for the driver's wife, although only in the most cerebral of liaisons. After lunch we strolled through a garden path to the beach. Bruce and I walked down to Rod Stewart's mansion. Pom Pom and Glenn in tow. The Alaskan was a good slave. Not Pom Pom.He confided several secrets to me. We had known each other over twenty years. I gave him advice on love.

"A man with a wife and mistress in a foreign country must know the meaning of love."

"I do when I hold my daughter in my arms."

"And when will you go back?"

"I don't know." The sun dropped behind the palm trees. We swam in the ocean. I hadn't been with this many people in nearly a month. Lisa came down from Chilean Avenue for a beer. She was a good laugh. Happy to be away from her Palm Beach friens. Bruce taught Pom Pom tricks. He was the master of ceremony. Palm Beach almost seemed paradise, then it was time for them to go. Bruce pulled me to the side and duked $20 into my hand.

"For some more wine."

"Thanks, I need it." Dixie Supermarket sold big bottles. $7 for 1.5 liter. It wasn't so bad with ice. for I wasn't looking for veritas in vino, but oblivio.

"Darling, everything will be fine. You were arrested. You didn't go to jail. You came here. You still speak with your wife and mistress. You'll be a father again and________"

"And?" I hope for him to say I was a brilliant writer.

"And you're living in a mansion."

"Yes, with a crazy dog." Pom Pom ran up to Bruce seeking a last favor.

"Silly dog." Bruce patted the Airedales's head. "The only cheese I have is under____"

"Spare us."

"If I must." Bruce kissed me good-night and slipped his arm around Glenn. Pom Pom barked good-bye and I waved, as they drove to Ocean Drive. Lisa beeped her horn. I walked over to her car. The sky darkened overhead.

"That was something we never see in Palm Beach. Real people. I can't wait till we get out of here."

"Me neither."

She always talked about selling her house and vacating the USA for Paris, but she like me wasn't gong anywhere, but low season in PB. She backed out on the driveway. Pom Pom and I stood outside for several seconds. Rain splattered down from the now black sky and we retreated to inside the house. It wasn't home, but I didn't need a home in Palm Beach, only a place to rest my head and this house suited that Pom Pom and my needs fine.

ps I still have that jean jacket.

Fame On The F Train

Written Aug 7, 2012

Yesterday afternoon my long journey from Sriracha, Thailand ended with the 747's touchdown at JFK in New York. I hadn't slept much on the flight and jetlag threatened to seize my body and soul, as I unpacked my bag at my Fort Greene apartment. Sleep crowded my vision, but the writer Bruce Benderson was celebrating his birthday at his East Village flat. A cold shower revived me and I dressed for summer in khaki trousers, a white tee-shirt, and a colorful sports jacket.

The party was fun. Bruce was ablaze with joy. His guests were of all ages, although most were young male admirers of his transgressive novels. They loved my peach suit coat. I said that it was orange. They argued that it was peach. We drank lots of wine and I recounted stories of Times Square in 1970s. One of his friends was a tall boy from Idaho. Ryan rued missing the age of unprotected sex.

"I sometimes risk it, but feel like a gun is to my head. You never had to worry about that in the 70s."

"No, but that's when AIDS started to hit the gay community. My friend Jim Spicer died at NYU Hospital in 1978. The doctors were perplexed by the resistance of his pneumonia to their treatment. I sat by the bed the night of his death. No nurses dared come into the room. They thought he had the plague."

"Sorry for your loss."

"There were many."

We discussed drugs and sex for an hour.

"I like your jacket." Ryan wasn't coming on to me. He worked in fashion. "It's not often that straight men wear that color."

"Orange."

"No, peach."

At 10pm Bruce politely pointed out that we had finished the wine and beer and vodka. I wished him a 'happy birthday' and strolled over to the 2nd Avenue subway stop. The F train rumbled into the station and I sat down for the short ride to Jay Street, where I would change trains for Fort Greene.

I woke up at the 18th Street station, six stops beyond Jay Street.

An inbound train was stopping on the other side of the tracks. I ran up the stairs and jumped on it before the doors slid shit and sat down for the ride back to Jay Street.

My eyes shut for a second and I woke up at Jay Street jumping to my feet. A young passenger looked at me and asked, "Hey , mister, are you famous?"

"No, but I am tired," I got off the train, wondering why he would think me famous. The reflection in the train's window gave the answer. The jacket was the color of a peach and it was famous not me.

The End Of The Road

The other day I was speaking with Bruce Benderson. Both of us were lamenting the hard economic times.

"I'm four months behind in my rent." Bruce still lived in the East Village.

"I'm only one month." I had been economically cleansed from East 1Oth Street by a $10,000 buyout from the managment company. The money helped buy me a car in Thailand for my wife and daughter Angie.

"Then you're practically rich," cackled the infamous writer of gay hustling scene around the world. Critics in Europe had loved THE ROMANIAN. It had sold less than five thousand copies in the USA.

That wasn't bad, considering most American don't read.

"And I recently finished my novel about hitchhiking across the country in 1974." I called it BACK AND FORTH. It had no plot. I had sent the pitch and first chapters to thirty agents. None of them had gotten back to me.

"I hitchhiked out to San Francisco in 1969 with my friend. We had about $100 in our pocket. We made it last, because we hustled here and hustled there. One time we were picked up by this really straight guy in Denver and he asked if I wanted to make some money. I said yes and he gave me $20. I felt so dirty. It was lovely."

"My novel has me meeting a Peggy Lipton lookalike tranny." Maya had been driving a Porsche convertible.

"And did you do her?"

"More than once." We shared a satisfying week in Santa Cruz. Maja was never a man to me. She wore fancy lingerie in a dark bedroom and one candle helped tell the lie.

"Those were different times." Bruce had a few years on me. He had been places that were where it's at before I got to them when they had lost their luster.

"John Waters hitchhiked across the country last year."

"That old queen got rides?" Bruce was looking good for a man who had never exercised in his life.

"He went without a film crew too." I had been jealous hearing this story. "A band passed him in Kansas and thought he was a bum, but then one ot them said that he looked like John Waters and they turned around to pick him up."

"Amazing, but I was speaking with him the other day and John told me that he can't get any money to make a film. Now he does this stand-up routine traveling from place to place like a vagabond."

"John Waters can't find financing for a movie?" I was trying to scrap up cash to film my diamond district movie BET ON CRAZY. I was a nobody. My chances of gettting a backer were close to zero, but John Waters had filmed PINK FLAMINGOS and no one in Hollywood was planning on repackaging Divine's opus extraordinaire.

"It's a tragedy, but we outlive our usefulness, although I have to new boyfriend. He's only twenty-six." Bruce liked them young.

"Then you're rich too." I dreamed about sleeping with my son's mother all the time. Mam was on the other side of the world and the $40 in my pocket wasn't enough to pay a ticket to Chicago. Hitchhiking to California wasn't a problem, but getting a ride across the Pacific was an impossibility. Tramp steamers were as extinct as hitchhikers, except in B Traven's DEATH SHIP.

"I suppose I am." Bruce cooed aglow in the warmth of a young man's love.

"I wish I was." I wanted to see the faces of my four kids.

"You will be. Old hustlers always have a last shot at the big time and you've got a couple more left in you."

It was wishful thinking, but that's the best kind when you are on the road to nowhere.