chapter 04. hell's kitchen (1982)

After Charles died, I couldn’t remember what I was mad at him about. Well, I knew what – august chagrin – but I didn’t know why, not really. It was such a petty thing on my part. Even still, I couldn’t bring myself to approach him at the funeral. August, I mean. August Collins, who by that time was fully identifying as “august chagrin, performance artist.” It’s embarrassing to me now as I write this. I guess it was all about jealousy. Maybe even I had feelings for August, but to this day I can’t bring myself to say the L word, not to him or anybody.

That’s what Charles said it was: Love. Charles said I was in love with August, said that that was the only reason I was acting like such a child. I told Charles he was full of shit. I told Charles he had changed. He didn’t respond to the accusation, which in the heat of the moment told me I was right; Charles had changed and it was entirely his fault.

I let Charles know I wouldn’t speak to him again until he promised to stop supporting August’s career. He shrugged and took away his cocaine and left me alone in his loft for a date with Stephane, the gorgeous French boy. That night as they fucked, Charles had an aneurysm and died, fully erect and fully inside of Stephane. He was sixty-three years old.

Charles didn’t change. Charles was always Charles. The only thing he was wrong about was that fucking wouldn’t kill him. When I met him in the spring of ’82, his friends were already starting to die of aids. He believed he was immune because he was a top. He figured he would outlive people like Stephane and me, bottoms who would open wide for any fat cock that came along. So much for that theory.

Stephane was a wreck at the funeral. He sat in the pew behind me at St. John the Divine and cried like a young widow. He was young, but he was no widow. He and Charles had been out only a handful of times, and his run was coming to an end like so many before him. Charles believed that romantic love was not possible; he had friends and he had men he fucked, and rarely did they come in contact with each other.

I didn’t trust Stephane’s noisy tears. Charles abhorred nelly gay men and I was sure if Charles could have seen what his death brought out in Stephane, he would have been as disgusted as I was.

August sat two pews in front of me, not making much noise but constantly wiping his face, his transsexual lover “Lorax” petting him and rubbing her ridiculous black mourning wig on him. Anita was sitting next to me. She held my hand throughout the service and squeezed tight when the emotions overtook her and the tears spilled out. I ignored her as best I could. It seemed like everybody at St. John the Divine was crying except for me. I was quietly seething. Anita thought I was dumbstruck with grief. When I told her later about my fight with Charles the day before the night he died and that I didn’t feel sad at the funeral, she told me I would regret that. She was right, of course.

Charles Hatch always did whatever he wanted to do, and for the most part he enjoyed life. After he was dead, I learned of his insecurities, but the family fortune afforded him the ability to hide his insecurities while he was living, even from people who spent as much time with him as I did. He ate at fancy restaurants; he threw parties that were attended by famous people like David Bowie, Andy Warhol and William “Bill” Burroughs; he had memberships at two health clubs – one in Chelsea, the neighborhood just south of Hell’s Kitchen, the other at the “cruisy” Sixth-third Street ymca – where he worked out five or six days a week, keeping his body looking fifteen years younger than his actual age and providing him with ample opportunities to meet the types of men he was most interested in: well-sculpted and half his age.

I was exactly one-third Charles’ age when we met. I was a very naïve eighteen-year-old, having lived the whole of my life until the spring of ’82 in Central Florida. And I had only ventured outside of my home state once, to Las Vegas, the summer between high school and college.

I found myself in New York City precisely because of the one year I spent in college in Gainesville. It wasn’t a very good year for me. Educationally it went well enough – I was a C+ student, on the path to becoming a famous playwright, or so I believed and had been made to believe by my supposed best friend Christian, himself on the path to becoming a famous actor. We had plans to transfer to nyu together our sophomore year, or at the very least our junior year. But then we betrayed each other; me by believing our friendship was on the path to becoming something more than it was, him by reading my journal behind my back and discovering my hopes and dreams for our future together in New York City.

Maybe the fact that he read my journal in the company of my roommate Zeke (who had snuck it out of our room) and several others in our dorm, Christian felt the need to publicly defend his reputation. He called to tell me emphatically that he was not gay, that being gay was “wrong,” and that we would not be going to New York City. I don’t know if he turned out gay and I doubt I ever will because Christian told me in the same phone call that after the semester ended, we could not be friends anymore.

It was apparent that I was no longer welcome at the University of Florida. I didn’t wait for the end of the semester. I rented a car and drove to New York City alone, if only to prove that Christian was wrong about one thing: I could go to New York, and I did.

It wasn’t an easy trip. I was afraid to fly because the only two times I had been on an airplane – to Las Vegas and back to Florida – the flights were fraught with turbulence, both literal and figurative. So I drove. But I had never driven more than a couple of hours at one time in my whole life. I slept in interstate rest stop parking lots and ate from vending machines. I drove more than a thousand miles in four days (getting lost twice in Pennsylvania).

My first night in New York City I spent at the Big Apple Youth Hostel, which I had passed several times while searching for the car rental place. I slept restlessly in a large dormitory-style room with four bunk beds and five roommates, snoring, farting boys around my age, most of whom probably didn’t speak English, all of whom ignored me and my overstuffed (stolen) duffel bag.

The next morning I found an ad on the hostel bulletin board for a job at a brand new weekly newspaper called The Kitchen Sink, published by none other than Charles Hatch. I didn’t have any kind of experience, but didn’t have enough money in my bank account or credit on my charge card to go anywhere else, so I called the number on the flier. Charles talked loud and fast in a sort of monotone lilt; he gave me directions to his office where I was to meet him for an “impromptu interview.” I almost didn’t go, afraid of what fate might have in store for me.

The fourth floor of an old factory in Hell’s Kitchen was the future editorial office of The Sink – which wouldn’t start publishing until the fall of ’82. A rickety industrial elevator carried me up and groaned open to reveal a huge dirty room with six columns of chipping paint and two walls of smudged windows filtering the sunlight and adding to the dreariness. When I stepped off of the elevator a booming voice came from the far corner. I recognized it as belonging to Charles Hatch. He was sitting behind a desk piled high with newspapers, magazines and photographs under a bare bulb that swayed gently and gave me the feeling I was on a ship.

He pointed me to the metal folding chair in front of his desk, which I had to squat on in order to see him over the stacks. He laughed and called me “resourceful.” Other than that, the interview didn’t go so well, as least not in my mind. Charles asked me for references and experience. I had none. I didn’t even have an address to give him to put under the neat block letters spelling out randy reardon on the top line of the index card he held. I told him I would find out the address of the hostel, but doubted I would be there very long then spilled out my sad luck story of having my journal read behind my back, of being forced out of Florida because I wasn’t like the others. I offered to do anything at all, even clean toilets, anything to keep me from having to go back to my past – which frankly I couldn’t even afford to go back to if I wanted to.

Charles stood and instructed me to follow him. At the back of the loft, down a short hall between two bathrooms, was a spiral staircase. We climbed to the fifth floor, to Charles’ home. It was the most magical place I had ever seen: orange shag carpet, avocado walls, gold-gilded columns, black ovals hanging from the ceiling like big olives lit from within and hanging over a seating area, two chocolate brown suede love seats and a matching couch with chrome accents. In the middle of them was a mirror cube coffee table reflecting light and rainbows from their beveled edges onto the walls and twelve-foot high ceiling.

Large oil paintings of naked men with animals or holding bowls of fruit or holding one another in a water fountain or other odd location decorated the walls. The antique-looking fancy gold frames didn’t quite go with the modern pieces, but I didn’t know that. Charles told me they were the work of his recent “project,” a very talented young man he’d met in Martha’s Vineyard a few years earlier. He rattled off the names of several galleries in New York City, Boston and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he had helped arrange for showings. I didn’t know anything about any of it, but managed to express the awe he seemed to crave.

Then I stated the obvious – though it had just that moment become obvious to me.

me: Charles…you’re gay!

he laughed: What ever gave you that idea?

me: Well, I don’t have a problem with it.

he: Thank goodness.

me: I mean, I think I might be gay, too.

he: You think?

I blushed.

me: Well…

he: How about we have a drink and figure it out once and for all?

me: What do you mean?

he: I mean Southern Comfort and coke.

me: Oh…

he: You’re not a teetotaler, are you?

me: A what?

he: Just have a seat and we’ll find out.


Charles made strong drinks for us then produced a fat joint out of a hidden drawer in the coffee table, over which he told me his life story. He was the youngest and only boy in a family of three kids; his father died when he was two; his mother took over the family real estate business and made it more successful than ever. He and his two sisters each inherited one-third of the fortune when their mother died. His eldest sister took over the family business; his middle sister married a Wall Street businessman and became a housewife; and Charles dabbled in the Arts. He had helped several painters get their start, had financed an all-gay theater troupe in Greenwich Village, and supported a writer through two versions of his gay novel before he committed suicide. Charles listed these projects, as he called them, in a sort of bland fashion, as if he had no emotional connection to any one of them, not even the suicide victim.

And then, mid-sentence he stopped himself and said it was my turn to share. I really felt I had nothing interesting to say, nothing to compare with all of the things he had seen and done in his life. He assured me we weren’t in competition, he just wanted to know what made me who I was.

he leaned close and winked: I’ll let you in on a little secret. You’re still being interviewed.

I stammered a bit, suddenly hyper-aware of every stupid word I was saying. Charles opened another secret drawer in the mirror cube between us and brought out a small wooden box containing a brown bottle of cocaine, a razor blade and a glass tube.

Maybe this will help.

We snorted cocaine and drank more Southern Comfort and smoked another joint. I had never before been so comfortably wasted and divulged my life history in backwards chronology, starting with college, then Las Vegas before that, Rich White before that, and my mother Mona, my half-sister Rona, and Marco, whom Rona stole from Mona’s best friend Brenda.

he: And what are you going to do with all of that, Randy?

me: What am I gonna do with it?

he: Yes, what are you going to do with it? You’ve got a rich past – no pun intended – and you could likely make art out of it.

I looked around the walls at the paintings blurring in my present state.

me: Well, I dunno if I can make art out of it, but I’ve always dreamed of writin’ plays.

he: A playwright! Yes! You should definitely be a playwright! You’ve certainly got the inspiration. Of course, it remains to be seen if you’ve got the talent.


I pictured myself as one of Charles’ projects, and tried to imagine where his interviews with talented young men ended up. Since he was old and gay, I figured the best thing I could offer him was my young body; I started flirting. I’m sure I made a fool of myself, but it didn’t really matter, I reached my goal. I seduced him, in a manner of speaking. Charles laughed at me as he leaned over a white line on the coffee table; I was right next to him, pushing my leg against his as suggestively as I could manage.

he: You aren’t my type at all, Mr. Reardon, but I’ll do you a favor.

me: A favor? Like what?

he: Well, how about I fuck you and catch you up on what you’ve been missing all these years.

I giggled, titillated.

me: Oh, yeah?

he: Oh, yeah. I’m quite serious. I’m going to fuck the shit out of you tonight and, what’s more, you’re going to love it.


He was right on both counts. We had sex the rest of the night and into the next day. I slept nestled in his arms, all six-foot five-inches of him enveloping me. We slept through the afternoon, occasionally awakened by a phone ringing nonstop somewhere in the loft. Charles ignored it and pulled me closer.

When we finally crawled out of bed late the next day, hung over and hungry, I grabbed at Charles. He pulled away.

We went out for dinner and got drunk again, stopped at the Big Apple Youth Hostel on the way back to his loft to pick up my duffel bag and check out before I had to pay for another night. Back at his place, he called after me as I carried my bag toward the back of the loft.

he, a bit curt: Hey! Where do you think you’re going?

me: I was gonna put this in the bedroom so it’s not in the way.

he: Okay, fine, but not my bedroom. The next door in the hall is the guest room. Put it in there. As of now, you are a guest.

I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, but didn’t think it was anything other than hospitality until it came time to go to bed again and I turned ahead of him into his bedroom.

he: Randy!

me: What?

he: What are you doing?

me: Going to bed.

he: Listen. We aren’t lovers.

me: What?

he: We aren’t lovers. We aren’t even fuck buddies. Last night was a one-time deal. Got it?

me: …Are you mad at me or something?

he: No. –Don’t make that face at me. I’m not mad at you.

me: Are you sure?

he: What the hell!? Yes, Randy, I’m sure. As I told you last night, you’re not my type.

me: …What’s wrong with me?

he: Nothing!

He sighed.

For one thing, you’re a little young. I know I like my men young, but not quite as young as you. You’ve got a lot of growing up to do. I don’t want to be your sugar daddy.

me: My what?

he: You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, Randy. I’m going to figure out some kind of way to help you out. I like you. You make me laugh. And you need a little help, that’s obvious. But this isn’t about sexual favors, Randy. I picture you as my personal Pygmalion.

me: Your what?

he: Pygmalion… My Fair Lady?

me, completely unaware: Okay.

he: We’ll get you on your feet, give you some kind of work to do. I don’t know if it’ll be in the newspaper business, but I don’t know that it won’t be. But anyway, it’s late, I’m tired and I want to sleep alone tonight, so go down there and sleep in that bed. That’s your room for now. Make yourself at home. Help yourself to the liquor or the coffee table or whatever you need, just don’t go into my room without being invited.

I slumped.

Do you understand?

me: I feel like I’m in trouble or something.

he: You’re not in trouble, Randy. Trust me. You’ll figure out soon enough that I don’t fuck the same man for very long, and when I’m done, they’re gone out of the picture, forever. You’re different. I think we might end up being good friends. If you’re interested in that.

me: Yes, of course, Charles.

he: But I don’t fuck my friends. It’ll make sense when you’re older.

me: You sound like my father.

he: I thought you didn’t have a father.

me: I don’t. But it sounds like I do now!

he: Good, then! Go to bed! Brush your teeth. –Not in that order!

me: Good night, Charles…

he: Good night, Randy. –And, hey, Randy?

me: Yeah?

he: Don’t forget your rubbers.

he: What?

me: When you fuck. aids is a mother-fucker.

he: Oh. Right.


I did several different jobs for Charles that summer, most of which fell under the title of Gopher. I spent eight to ten hours a day six days a week chiseling up broken asbestos tiles from the wooden floor, sanding down past the glue to the wood, scraping paint off of columns and walls, hand sanding exposed pipes along the ten-foot high ceiling. After that I painted the walls and the ceiling, pipes and all, in two shades of blue, cleaned the windows and organized Charles’ paperwork as he interviewed people for positions at The Sink. He paid me ten dollars an hour, and I got room and board. We also went out dancing in the Village sometimes, and on those occasions Charles paid for everything and even gave me money for a cab home because he inevitably disappeared into the darkness with a handsome muscle-bound man in his mid-twenties.

Sometime in May, Charles started dating a guy named Rolf, a thick, handsome German guy. I always felt the need to hide out in the guest room when they were there, even though Charles said it wasn’t necessary, but the couple of times I tried to make conversation with Rolf, we both felt completely out of place. It gave me a good opportunity to look up words I didn’t know in the four-inch thick dictionary that lived on a pedestal in the guest room.

At the beginning of June, Charles gave me the key to an apartment in a tenement building his family owned on Ninth Avenue between 45th and 46th Streets. The rent was $120, which I realized some time later was a great steal. Initially it didn’t seem so because I had to clean out the apartment after the previous tenant who had died in the apartment in the big dip in the middle of the mattress. She had only been dead and gone a few days when I was given the opportunity to clean it up and move in. Charles disappeared to Fire Island for two months, only the first of which was spent with Rolf, who was then sent out to sea, in a manner of speaking, never to be seen again.

The horrible stench of rotting food and urine in my new apartment seemed to be emanating from the bed. The first thing that had to go was obviously the mattress. I wrapped my face in a vinegar-soaked t-shirt (Charles’ suggestion), wore dishwashing gloves and dug up under the stained pink cover for the bottom of the mattress. I dragged it down the six flights of stairs and leaned it against the building, gagging. Then I went back up for the box springs.

When I lifted the also stained bottom half out of the metal frame, there was a dash across the room, which I believed was a rat, even though it was orange and white. It was a cat, the turds and shredded newspaper under the bed were the next clues. I searched the apartment and finally found the poor malnourished creature hiding behind the refrigerator, his golden eyes the only thing that had any life in them.

I called “Here, kitty, kitty,” a hundred times with no results, then started opening cabinets to see what he might be interested in. One cabinet was dedicated to cans of tuna stacked four high and three deep. I opened several drawers to reveal scattering roaches before I came across the can opener. When I pierced the top of a tuna can, the cat behind the refrigerator sprang out like I imagined he always did and started walking scrawny figure-8s around my legs, purring and crying.

I fed him two whole cans of tuna before he was satisfied then followed him back into the bedroom where he crawled under the box springs and took a shit. I called out, “Tuna!” inadvertently giving him a name. He ignored me, so ritual was his task, and I worried that I would have to get rid of him if he continued using the underside of the bed for his bathroom.

Except for a brief stint with an iguana, I had never had a pet in my life, and the idea of having one delivered to me right there in my first apartment excited me and gave me an odd sense of hope about my future in New York City. I spent the month of June cleaning the apartment, pulling up the carpet and sanding the floor down to a nice wood grain. I didn’t think Charles would pay to have it professionally varnished like he had The Sink office, so I cleaned it with wood soap and was proud of the slight luster my hard work created.

Tunacat took to his new litter box like a professional, and he did well at Charles’ loft when I snuck him there so I could sand my apartment floors. He seemed as pleased to return to his new, improved home as I was to take him there. I kept the dead lady’s bed frame and bought a brand new mattress set; the rest of the mismatched furniture I acquired came from Charles’ storage unit, items that had belonged to evicted tenants. Charles told me to ask Ricardo the superintendent of my building to help me move the big furniture; he did so happily, which I guess meant Charles paid him.

My very first apartment was beautiful when it was clean and painted (the same two shades of blue as The Kitchen Sink office). Other than trips to the corner delicatessen for groceries or a nearby restaurant for take-out, I hardly left my apartment because Charles wasn’t in town to show me around and because I kind of preferred being there with Tunacat and the tv.

It was on one of these occasions, when I was alone but not feeling lonely, deciding between pizza and Chinese for dinner, flipping through the channels, when I came across a tv show featuring five gay men singing a capella. The woman announcer introduced them as such, “The only openly gay a capella group in the world: the Flirtations!”

A studio audience applauded politely, and the men sang:

The higher you build your barriers,

The taller I become.

The farther you take my rights away,

The faster I will run.

You can deny me,

You can decide

To turn your face away;

No matter, ’cause there’s

Something inside so strong.

I know that I can make it,

Though you’re doing me wrong, so wrong.

You thought that my pride was gone, oh no,

There’s something inside so strong,

Woah, no—something inside so strong.


Tunacat let out a mrow and I realized I was stroking him harder than I meant to be. I looked down to apologize and a tear fell off of my cheek onto his fur. I was crying and I didn't know why. Surely they weren't tears of sadness; surely they were tears of joy. Tunacat stretched a paw out in front of him lazily and nestled his chin back on my lap, purring loudly, and in that moment I knew it: I was home.