Charles Hatch and his team of editors decided that publishing The Kitchen Sink biweekly instead of weekly, as originally planned, was more feasible. My name was on the masthead as an editor, but I was the lowliest of the low – less important even than the advertising salespeople – I got no vote.
I was the Listings Editor; my job entailed putting together a compendium of arts and community events and services on the inside back two pages of the paper. Though it could be argued that some residents of or visitors to Hell’s Kitchen might pick up The Sink specifically for the listings – to find out the current play running at a specific theatre, the address of that theatre, where to get a meal after the show, or perhaps where to get a massage before – my orders came from on high, from the other editors, who were all my bosses under Spike the Managing Editor and Charles the Publisher.
Mostly, I worked with Tron, a Chinese guy, who was the Arts Editor. He had worked for his college paper in Boston, and he essentially taught me how to do my job. Tron was a highly emotional man who exploded at the slightest provocation. He had a style that wasn’t unlike my mother’s, so I knew when and how to get out of his way when he was in one of his moods. Tron and Aaron the News Editor were always at each other’s throats. Tron believed the arts section was the most important in The Sink, and was always pushing for more resources, even though it was already the most expensive section in the paper. His biggest mistake was getting up in Spike’s face when Spike sided with Aaron on some irrelevant issue.
After Christmas break, at the first weekly staff meeting, there was a buzz in the office as we ate bagels and waited for Charles and Spike to arrive. Tron was conspicuously absent. The big announcement was that a new arts editor had been hired. Her name was Anita Cox. I already knew – Charles told me over Christmas dinner – but had been sworn to secrecy. Charles told me that part of the reason he hired her was because of her name. He said, “I thought a drag queen might show up to the interview!”
Anita Cox was a Jewish girl from the suburbs of New Jersey who had just graduated early from Princeton with a major in journalism and a minor in theatre. She was perfect for the job. She had sandy blond hair and hazel eyes, an aquiline nose, a small chest and a big behind. At five-foot-five, she was exactly my height, which made me no longer the shortest person in the office. She also had a big mouth like me, a real smartass. We hit it off immediately.
Every two weeks when the current issue of The Sink was put to bed, Charles threw a party upstairs in his loft or on the roof when the weather was nice. Charles didn’t bring out the cocaine for these parties – he was under the impression that no one knew about his “little habit” – but there was always lots of food and alcohol. He didn’t mind if people smoked cigarettes or joints on the roof, and occasionally he took a sporting toke.
Anita and I tended to be the last two to leave, and when it was just the three of us, Charles opened the secret compartment of his mirror cube coffee table and packed our nostrils with white powder, then we would head down to the Saint on Second Avenue in the East Village where Charles was treated like a vip and we were too when we were with him. Charles usually disappeared before the night was very old at all with a Chelsea Boy (as the young, muscled homosexuals were called) leaving Anita and me happily inebriated on the dance floor. Fridays following those Thursday nights were half-days at The Sink starting at noon to account for everyone’s hangovers.
When Charles hooked up with a lover for a while, Anita and I found ourselves without our wealthy, connected playmate and opted for the cheaper entertainment to be found at the Pyramid Club over on Avenue A. The Pyramid was tiny but employed great deejays and put on outrageous drag shows, particularly on weekend nights. Anita and I were together most nights of the week except when she had a deadline to meet; after work we would have a drink together, then dinner, another drink at a different bar, and sometimes a dance club after that. We did a lot of cocaine in those days and lived on four or five hours sleep on weeknights and caught up on the weekends. Even when we didn’t have anything better to do and could have been home in bed we were too tired to dance and too wired to go home, so we walked the streets of Greenwich Village talking and being obnoxious.
It was during these walks that Anita “trained” me to be a better homosexual. She pointed out men who were cruising me and taught me how to reciprocate. It happened like this: A hot man passed us on the sidewalk; we said, “Yum!”; Anita looked over her shoulder then back at me, slugging me in the arm.
she: That guy was totally cruising you.
I looked back, too late.
me: How do you know?
she: He was checking out your cute little ass.
me: He was not!
she: He fuckin’ was! When I looked back he was wiping the drool off his chin!
me: Shut up!
I looked again but had missed out.
How do you know he wasn’t checking out your ass.
she: Because, he’s a fag!
me: How can you tell?
she: How can you not?! Jesus Christ, Randy, I’m a better queer than you are!
me: Fuck you!
she put an arm around my neck: Dear, sweet, innocent Randy… The next time a hot man walks past you, look back over your shoulder. Don’t wait too long, just a few steps. If he’s looking back, he’s cruising you.
me: What do I do then?
she: Fuck him. Or blow him. Or whatever.
me: Where?
she: Do you want me to hold your hand? –Wherever! Go to his place or take him to yours, squat between a couple of parked cars. –I see guys cruising each other in Tompkins Square Park all the time.
me: Really?
she mimicked me: Really?
me: I don’t know, Needa; I’m too shy.
she: Please? For me? Do it for me, Gotta.
She called me “Gotta,” as in “Got a cock,” and I called her “Needa…”
One of the things Anita and I had in common was our love of black men. More than once we got yelled at on the streets by people awakened in the middle of the night by our drunken, boisterous version of our “theme song” from the musical Hair:
Black boys are delicious.
Chocolate-flavored love.
Licorice lips like candy,
Keep my cocoa handy.
I have such a sweet tooth
When it comes to love.
But, alas, we were both single. Perhaps it had something to do with our cavorting and carrying on. In Anita’s opinion, in her case it was a matter of bad luck, but in my case it was simple laziness. She told me that gay men were having sex all over Manhattan, and if I just applied a little more initiative, I could get in on it. She pointed out with envy several of the establishments where sex was happening at all hours of the day and night: xxx video stores, the St. Mark’s Baths, leather clubs like the Anvil and the Ram Rod, even the dark corners of the Pyramid. I was temporarily blind to it all.
Then one night, on my way home, I stepped into the video store at my East Village subway stop. The front half of it was an actual store; the walls were painted a sexy red, the ceiling a dangerous black. Aisles were created out of wire racks of videos and wooden racks of magazines featuring every kind of sex act imaginable and some quite unimaginable. At the back wall, a dirty gray curtain behind a shiny turnstile had a sign over it: video previews 25¢.
I got change for a dollar at the cash register and made my way there. Inside, the walls and ceiling were both black. There was a row of doors with red lights over them, one per door, intermittently going off and on. A cacophony of music and moans flooded the room. Men of all shapes, sizes and ages were stuck to the wall across from the doors eyeing one another, suspiciously, it seemed to me. One of the doors opened, a man exited, another quickly entered; a quarter was dropped, the red light over the door illuminated, and another track was added to the mix of sounds.
Eventually, I tired of waiting patiently and pushed my way into a newly opened room. It was more of a closet, actually, barely wider than the door I entered through and about that deep as well. It was pitch black inside. I fumbled around the alternately rough and slippery features of the room until I knocked down a board on a hinge that formed a bench seat in front of the closed door. I sat and could make out a gray metal box with a coin slot. I dropped a quarter and a porn video came up in front of me on a screen smaller than my little tv at home. Three men were in the throes of ecstasy, shooting their wads on each other’s faces and backsides. I unzipped my jeans and started masturbating.
I noticed a round hole in the side wall connecting to the adjacent closet as something entered it. An erect black cock slid into my space a few inches from my knee. I reached out and put my hand around it. It was thick and hot, the protruding veins pumping blood. I squeezed it a couple of times. It slipped out of my hand suddenly; I drew back, afraid I had done something wrong. A set of licorice lips appeared at the hole. “Suck it,” they said. The cock appeared again. I was happy to oblige the request. I squatted in front of the hole, kneeled into a cool wet puddle of cum from the previous tenant or tenants, slurping the great cock deep into my throat.
My quarter ran out and the video stopped. I continued sucking until there was a rap on the door and a voice with a strange accent like the man at the register saying, “Drop a quarter.” I did, and did again every three minutes for another seventy-five cents. I ran out of quarters and ignored the knocking, but the voice became more insistent – I was sure it was the manager – so I excused myself from the big black cock and went back to the register for more change. This time, I got five dollars worth, which clunked in my pocket with an obvious intent as I walked across the store.
Inside the video section, my closet had been occupied. I stood at the wall opposite until the door next to mine opened and out walked a beautiful black man who was likely the owner of the cock I had been sucking. He passed me with a sheepish grin on his face, through the gray curtain and out of sight. He was done; I had missed out.
But there were more to be had. I spent my five dollars and another two besides and went home horny, even though I had cum twice.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that Anita was right, gay sex was everywhere. I went into more xxx video stores and had similar results; I discovered men masturbating at the urinals in Port Authority, Penn Station and Grand Central; I saw men giving head at the ends of certain subway platforms. When the weather turned warm, I walked through the Rambles of Central Park where birdwatchers scooted along the trails, binoculars in hand, and homosexuals stayed out of their view, low and in the bushes, doing all kinds of nasty things together.
Then, quite by accident, I found mecca. I missed my subway stop at Port Authority because I was drunk and ended up at Columbus Circle. Instead of crossing over to the Downtown side, I walked home, taking Eighth Avenue. There it was, a lighted blue marquee with glittering lights on the underside and adonis on the front. On the sidewalk was a poster in a lighted case marked midnight show. The poster featured several shiny, naked men with stars covering their penises.
My curiosity guided me through the blacked-out glass doors. Inside was a grand lobby with wicker chairs and fake ferns crawling up the legs of shiny black statues of the handsome young god Adonis. More movie posters featuring naked men adorned the walls, these without stars.
A black woman with a pretty face and a suspicious glare sat inside a small glass booth. She put down the paperback she was reading and called me over to pay. She had three colors of eye shadow thickly applied and persimmon lips that she licked and chewed on as she asked for my seven dollars.
The book she was reading was Jaws by Peter Benchley; it lay facedown behind a small black sign with white plastic letters pressed into it:
a night at the adonis
1200 245 530 815 1100
skin deep
130 415 700 945
I read the first title out loud and the woman in the booth perked up. “Yes, sir,” she said, “That’s my movie! I’m in that!”
I didn’t ask what she was talking about, just took my change and went through the second set of doors into the glowing blue darkness. It was 2:30 a.m. and the final climactic scene of Skin Deep was on the huge screen at the front of the auditorium; seven studs were fucking and sucking and moaning to a cheesy soundtrack. I stayed at the back of the room getting my bearings. There were silhouettes of heads in the theatre seats, sometimes two but usually just one with several empty seats around them, or so I thought. Randomly heads popped up in the empty seats next to the occupied ones or full bodies stood up in front of them. They were having sex!
Men walked past me alone and in pairs, heading down into the theater or to the staircases at either side of the back of the auditorium. Downstairs went to the restrooms – lighted art deco signs marked men to the right, women to the left – and upstairs went to the balcony. One man swiped his hand across my ass as he passed and sauntered up the stairs. I followed. In the lobby outside of the balcony auditorium two men were making out at an unused bar; the ass swiper was drinking at a fancy stone water fountain cut into the wall. He looked up at me, wiped his mouth, smiled and rejected me with a shake of his head.
I entered the balcony section and found a seat. The feature film was just starting. It began with a cop car crossing the screen in front of the marquee outside; the marquee lit up, and then there she was, the black lady in the ticket booth. This was her movie.
A Night at the Adonis was kind of like a how-to movie for me, showing how men in that very establishment cruised one another and where they had sex. The acting was bad, but the actors were all handsome and well hung. Others in the balcony were masturbating, so I took my dick out and started stroking, which seemed to attract all kind of unappealing men. One after another, pudgy middle-aged white men plopped down next to me and grabbed at me or buried their face in my crotch. I was disenchanted. Where were the men like the ones onscreen?
I moved three times, but pudgies kept trying to wheedle their way into my adventure. I headed back downstairs, where there was a bit more variety, young and old, fat and skinny, black and white; some were fully dressed, others were completely naked; most were engaged in some sort of sexual activity.
I spied on a black man sitting in the middle of the auditorium with an older Asian man squatting between his knees sucking him. I sat in the side section for a while, then, when a pudgy sat next to me, got up and moved to the seat at the end of the row the black man was in. When he noticed me watching, he pushed the Asian man away and waved me over. The Asian man sulked as he departed; I took his place and disappeared into a musky crotch for a long time.
When the black man finally came deep into my throat, he pushed me off of him, pulled up his pants without a word and left. I figured he had gone home. I sat up in his seat and watched the film. At the end, the whole cast were in the men’s room; so, as the credits rolled, I made my way there to find out if the film was a documentary or a narrative.
The first two patrons I saw were pudgy middle-aged white men – there seemed to be no end – sucking off a white and Latino guy who were standing, kissing, tweaking one another’s nipples. At the urinal, two tall white guys were jerking themselves off as they stared each other down, their ass cheeks flexing rhythmically. An exotic looking man whose heritage I couldn’t decide stood at the sink watching the action around him through the mirror; his hands hung slack in the sink, like he’d got caught in the middle of deciding whether or not to wash them.
The bathroom door swung open and bumped me in the back. There was an apology; it was the black man I had been blowing earlier. He smiled broadly and pushed me into an empty toilet stall. I looked dreamily into his eyes as he unfastened my belt and jeans, pushed them to my knees and spun me around to face the black and white tiled wall. He unzipped his slacks, spit into his hand and shoved himself into me. I gasped like a porn star, and pretended I was one.
Anita milked me for the exacting details of my biggest adventure yet. When I had completely exhausted the story she sat staring at me in silence for the longest time. A smirk settled on her face as she chopped up cocaine on the ceramic tile on my particleboard coffee table and pushed it to me. While I did my lines, she came out with her plan.
she: I could do that.
me: What?
She snorted her lines.
she: I could totally do that.
me: Do what?
she: Go to the Adonis.
me: What?! No you couldn’t!
she: I fuckin’ could! And I will.
me: Needa, you’re a girl.
she: So?
me: Well, except for the woman in the ticket booth, I didn’t see any other girls there.
she: I’ll go in drag.
me: Drag?! I repeat: Needa, you’re a girl.
she: Boy drag, Gotta.
me: Boy drag? Needa…
she: Yes. Drag is drag, Randy. It’s not just boys dressing up like girls.
me: Whatever. You’ll never get away with it.
she: Yes I will, and you’re gonna help me.
me: Oh, no! No way! –You’ll get arrested.
she: Arrested!? By whom? Were there cops there, too?
me: No, but—
she: No, I didn’t think so. And they wouldn’t be arresting me if they showed up. You were the one engaging in sodomy!
me: Right. And so, what are you gonna do there, wear a dildo?
she: No! They’re not retarded, Randy! They’re horny faggots, hungry for the taste of cock. Real cock.
me: Right. I rest my case.
she: I’ll go as a bottom.
me: A bottom?! What if somebody sticks it in the wrong hole? It’s dark in there! You could end up pregnant!
she: Bottoms don’t just take it up the ass. I’m thinking blowjobs.
me, tapping out more cocaine: I don’t have a good feeling about this, Needa.
she: Fuck you, Gotta. It’s not fair that you get to have all the fun. I should’ve been born a homo.
me: Do you want more?
she examined how much coke was on the tile: Yeah, but that’s enough; let’s split that.
me: Okay.
she: How about this: The first time I’ll just watch.
me: The first time?! –Don’t ruin this for me, Needa.
she: I won’t. I swear. I’ll just go and watch.
me: Well, I’m not going in there with you. Forget it.
she: You don’t have to go in with me, just be there at the same time, in case something happens.
me: See, now you’re thinking something’s gonna happen.
she: No, I’m not. I just want your moral support. And I wanna have my best friend there afterward to compare notes.
I snorted my lines.
me: You’re crazy.
she: Come on, Randy.
me: No fuckin’ way!
she: Please?
me: No!
she: What do you want?
me: Huh?
she: I’ll buy you an ounce of coke.
me: No you won’t!
She snorted her lines.
she: Come on, Gotta, just do it.
me: No, no, no!
Well, of course, “no, no, no” turned into a yes. Not right away. I stood my ground as long as I could, but Anita just would not let it go. She promised me writing assignments if I helped her out, then threatened to make work a “living hell” if I didn’t; she gave me cocaine, bought me cocktails, always sure to say, “You owe me” when I thanked her.
She wore me down. In a weak moment I offered her a night at the Adonis as an early Christmas present, which she thought was perfect since she was a Jew and I was “godless.”
We made our way to Canal Street Jeans and she bought two boy outfits, one for her and one for me, as a thank-you. The weekend after Thanksgiving was our “date.” We met at Charles’ and had a drink and smoked a joint. He wasn’t a fan of places like the Adonis, so he just shook his head disapprovingly while Anita rubbed charcoal on her face to give herself a five o’clock shadow. She had dyed her hair black and borrowed a baseball cap one of Charles’ boys had left behind and tucked her hair up into it. She also had on horn rimmed glasses without lenses in them. To me, she looked like a hobo from a junior high school theatre production. She didn’t care.
I had second – and third, and fourth – thoughts about taking a woman to a gay male sex theatre, and had resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t likely be getting any action that night because I would be watching out for Anita. But when I saw that big Polish sausage flop out at the urinal next to me, I forgot about everything else. I followed the man who was sporting it to the balcony and made a meal of it.
But the very moment the Polish guy turned me around and entered me, pulling my hips deliciously close with his big, clunky hands, there was a very familiar sounding shriek from the downstairs auditorium followed by a commotion that everyone in the balcony was willing to ignore. Except me. I couldn’t ignore it; I knew it was Anita and that, as she had foreshadowed, something had gone wrong.
I pulled the Polish man out of me and apologized to his beautiful, dumb face. His accented whispers grew more pronounced as I dressed and left him standing there, throbbing and dismayed. Before I had even got to the exit door, a gaggle of pudgies had descended upon him.
Downstairs there was a rumble of discontent, very unlike the usual sounds of the Adonis. It seemed to be spreading outward from the very center to the aisles and side sections. Men were pulling up their pants, buttoning their shirts, perhaps checking themselves and their sex partners to see if the imposter was still among them.
She was gone. I went into the lobby where Eartha, the lady in the booth, looked up from her book and said nonchalantly, “She went that’a way,” pointing at the exit.
Outside, I got halfway down the block before I heard an insistent “Psst!” which I knew was for me.
Anita caught up with me. The baseball cap was missing; her five o’clock shadow was rubbed halfway off.
she: I need a drink!
I laughed, relieved.
me: What happened?
she: First, a drink.
We ducked into the first bar we came to – an Irish pub – and sat in a dark back booth drinking shots of tequila that she told the waitress to keep coming while she told me a story that ended with her dramatically flopping her hand onto the tabletop, her small hand and the red fingernail polish suddenly all too obvious.
me: Oh, shit.
she: Exactly! I can’t believe I forgot.
me: What did he say?
she: He grabbed my hand off his cock—
She demonstrated by grabbing my wrist hard.
–and said, “Hey!”
me: Oh, shit!
she: That’s what I said!
me: And then what’d he say?
she: I don’t know; I ran!
I raised a waiting shot glass.
me: Here’s to that!
We drank.
she: But you know what? Black guys are the best.
me: I agree.
she: I mean, if he’d been a white dude, he probably would’ve beat me up.
me: Oh, I don’t know about that. I wouldn’t have; I would’ve just been like, “Eek, a girl!”
she: Ew!
me: What?
she: You are so not my type, Gotta. I would never have sat down next to you.
me: Fuck you, Needa! No wonder you don’t have a man!
she: You’re not a man!
me: What?!
We mock argued and drank until the waitress cut us off then stumbled home singing our theme song. It wasn’t until we were standing in my apartment that I realized Anita had come all the way with me.
she: Can I crash here?
me: Yes, of course.
she: I’ll sleep on the couch.
me: Don’t be silly.
I guess that’s the way it went. I really only remember waking up in bed with Anita next to me and Tunacat sleeping between our feet. I propped myself up on an elbow, watched Anita sleep and listened to the blood pumping painfully in my brain.
she suddenly opened her eyes: Nothing happened!
I laughed.
me: How do you know? You were out cold. I took advantage of you, and I think I’m pregnant!
she: Ha, ha. –Randy, I need a mimosa.
Over brunch, Anita told me she had decided that morning to stop trying to be a gay man. I approved. And then, as if she made it happen just by stating her intention, she met Roscoe the week before Christmas break. He was a drop-dead gorgeous half-Jamaican with a charming accent and, according to my best friend, the biggest, most beautiful cock she had ever seen.
me: Does that mean you’re gonna change your name?
she: We haven’t talked marriage yet!
me: Gross! I wasn’t talking about marriage. I was talking about your name, Needa; are you gonna change your name to Gotta Cock?
she laughed: That’s your name. –Besides, Roscoe loves my name.
me: Figures.
I found myself unable to look Roscoe Harmon in the eyes; his beauty intimidated me. But also, my eyes were usually trained on his crotch, waiting for some sign of the gargantuan life he supposedly possessed. That probably made him uncomfortable, and likely had something (perhaps a lot) to do with the fact that Anita and I stopped hanging around one other as much. We worked together, and hung out at Charles’ parties and the company lunches and other occasional get-togethers – and we talked on the phone at least once a day – but Anita was obviously in love with Roscoe, and so she had less time for silly little me.
That was okay. I had my own life; it started and ended at the Adonis. I fancied myself a bit like Charles Hatch, believing that romantic love wasn’t possible, or even necessary. I had my friends and I had the many faceless men who fucked me. My ass was a popular attraction at the Adonis, I was told so all the time. I figured I might as well use it while I still had it.
And so I did.