“They always told me it was the greatest life if you don’t weaken... and I never did, fans. I never did”. - Marc Stevens
The Village in New York had always attracted a kaleidoscope of radical, deviant, and various other characters considered abhorrent by mainstream America. Homosexuals, lesbians, trans-people congregate in the West Village. Reds of the 40s gave way to the beatniks of the 50s, who evolved into the hippies of the 60s before surrendering the shattered counterculture ghetto to the junkies, artists, punks and sexual revolutionaries of the 1970s.
In 1978 I lived in a three-room railroad flat on East 10th Street with Alice, my hillbilly girlfriend. My faux-sister Pip and her sister, Pud, had an apartment off Bleecker Street over the jazz club, the Village Gate. She called me Pud. We had met at CBGBs, which was punk's version of the uptown Lincoln Center. Hilly, the owner, couldn’t figure out how the four of us got so drunk on one drink. It wasn’t magic. Pip and I smuggled bottles of vodka past Merv, the giant bouncer, at the door. No one seemed to care. Not even Hilly’s vigilant wife. Karen was more worried about marijuana, since the 9th Precinct always were on the take for bribes.
One Spring evening the Ghosts opened for the Dictators. My girlfriend didn’t like either band, so I went alone. Pip sat at a table near the stage. Our chairs leaned against the wall. Pip reached under the table to fill our glasses from a vodka bottle. We drank it neat without ice.
The Ghosts played a blistering set and closed out the show with RICHARD IS A FORKHEAD,. Richard Hell was our idol. The song was a low blow at Richard’s ragged coif. I tried to imitate his. Mine was a suedehead. The lead singer of the Voidoids was loved by every woman on the scene and then some. There was no encore for the Ghosts and the band’s juvenile guitarist came over to our table before heading to the dressing room.
“You mind.” Xcessive pointed to Pip’s glass. He had spotted our trick from the stage.
“Not at all.” My ‘sister’ was sweet on young punk rockers.
Xcessive drained the glass and coughed a little before wiping the sweat from his face.
“Thanks.”
“Good show.”
“We tried.”
The sixteen year-old guitarist threaded through his admirers by the stage and I said to Pip, “Isn’t he a little young for you?”
“He’s just a friend. Same as you.”
The cheery NYU coed wasn't a good liar. She had a crush on most of the musicians on the scene and many of the women and girls at CBGBs suffered the same affliction. This was the late 1970s and not the 50s. None of us were going steady, and I struggled to be faithful to my girlfriend, Alice.
“Besides, I have my eye on my new neighbor. He’s really cute. His name’s Marc Stevens,” cooed Pip.
“Marc Stevens?”
“You know him?”
“I don’t know him personally, but he’s the famous porno Mr. 10 and a Half.”
The well-hung actor was John Holmes’ rival in the XXX film industry. Both had thick cranks, although Marc was renowned for his gay sex performances
“Mr. 10 and a Half?”
“Yes, 10 and a Half inches.” I had seen him dancing naked other than silver body paint at Studio 54. His penis had appeared a normal size that evening.
“Oh, that’s big.”
“He was the star of THE DEVIL AND MRS. JONES.” The John Damiano XXX film had been shot in a Pennsylvania apple-packing factory and was considered chic porno.
“I don’t know that film.” Pip majored in English literature at NYU. For exotica, her professors expected their students to read MADAME BOVARY and Camus’ THE PLAGUE. The Francophile intellectuals had no use for pornography other than THE STORY OF O. Having haunted XXX theaters in Boston and New York, I gave Pip a 10-minute course in XXX films from DEEP THROAT to BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR. Her eyes shone with joy. She loved celebrities, especially since Mr. 10 and a Half lived right next door.
“He’s living with this girl, Jill Monro.”
“Jill’s is a trans-woman. She had an operation to turn her penis into a vagina. She’s the first trans movie star.” I had see none of here films. I wasn't really into porno movies.
“No, I can’t believe I didn't see that she is a transvestite.”
“Transsexual.”
Transvestites and Transexuals were two different creatures. I had heard from friends in the XXX industry that Jill had gone past a smooth bum. All the way. The operation was the best big step for someone trapped in a body not of their choosing. I didn't explain the difference to Kim. She kissed my cheek for explaining the birds and bees of a hidden sect.
“I love you, Pud.”
Not everyone held porno actors in esteem, but since my youth I had haunted XXX bookstores in Boston's Combat Zone and since my arrival in New York the Times Square peep shows in search of arcane films. My hillbilly girlfriend had no idea about my research. It was a secret I held close to my heart.
Later that spring, Pip announced she was throwing a party for a quartet of Geminis. She one. Me one too. Her best friend Cyrena and a heartthrob, Amos. Sean, an underground designer of nightclubs, decorated her apartment. She invited a two hundred people. That night over a hundred crammed into the duplex. I knew many of them.
“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 movie and cooed, "I loved Michael, Angelo and David."
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.Klaus one of them. 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. His hand smoothed my staff.
"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. The party was losing steam. It was time to go.
“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 hearing 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.
“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.”
“You’re a good boy.” Alice cuddled up to me with a childish tenderness.
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.
