PARADOXIA (4 page)

I
headed downtown. At the time south of Canal was a no-man's-land. Now it's overrun with shitty high-priced restaurants, lofts with a river view and million-dollar price tags. Back then there were a handful of low-rent artists who paid next to nothing to inhabit crumbling buildings in a neighborhood turned ghost town after dark. It seemed a suitable location to start looking. I'd met a few musicians who operated a bare-bones rehearsal studio a few blocks from the Hudson River. I decided to snoop around, see what I could scrounge.

The building next to theirs sat vacant. Four-story prewar commercial space. Large storefront windows propped up on the sidewalk. Ten feet tall. I scratched a small patch in the muddy glass. The insides a cobwebbed wonderland. Probably empty for years. In the second story a faded sign with phone number and address. Decided to scrimp on the quarter. The landlord was only a few blocks away.

He was a wheezing overweight nonpracticing Jew on his way home to the Island for the weekend. Caught him as he was locking up. I pitched a plea. Told him I'd seen the sign, cooed that I might be able to clean the place up, play building manager. Help him to get the building back on its feet. Maybe even have applications on hand.

A potential client might be made to feel more comfortable if a floor or two were already occupied. Business attracts business. My presence would definitely stir up interest. I could take it over on a trial basis, no lease needed. Obviously, for years the space had accumulated dust, not rent. Maybe I could help him turn it around. It would benefit us both. He bought it.

I convinced him to waive the rent. He told me to come back Monday and pick up the keys. And bring a flashlight—the electricity had been turned off since the Kennedy assassination.

The four massive floors were gloriously stripped of everything except the columns that supported them. The third floor was edged in an iron balcony lending it the air of a vaudevillian strip joint. Huge holes were rusted in the spiral staircases leading up to the gangplanks.

Low-lying puffs of dust sparkled with the soft light that leaked in through pinpricks dotting the roof. The second floor was devoid of any character, a huge blank space once used as storeroom. The ground floor, which I took as my own, consisted of two massive rooms, fronted by immense store windows. I would construct bizarre set designs in them from junk scavenged from the trash, discarded mannequins, dead flowers, old shoes. The odd passerby would occasionally wander in, wondering if it was a club, a shop, or a brothel.

The basement was the real gem. It held an ancient printing press last used during the Depression. Parts were scattered everywhere, letters spelling out strange haikus on the floor. Old newspapers piled high in every corner, hibernating under inches of dust, dirt, plaster. You could lose yourself for hours, faking headlines on the floor, or in a solitary game of
Scrabble
. Toward the back of the basement, a small arched door was rotting off its hinges. My flashlight illuminated catacombs extending under the sidewalk fifteen or so feet. Dark dingy tombs only five feet high, lined with damp brick dripping dirty water from rusted pipes. I flashbacked to the Inquisition. Women dressed in tattered burlap, bruised and bleeding, imprisoned on charges of heresy, kept chained and starved, beaten and tortured. Turned into saints for what they didn't believe in. Their legirons long since rusted away. Mournful screams muffled by the hands of time whose bony fingers had scratched secrets into the dirt floor. It was magical.

At least I was out of 24th Street. The hippies had started to grate. Uptight for dopeheads. They turned green when informed I had my own building. All to myself. Buttered up the musos next door, who were generous enough to let me shower there occasionally. Hadn't been running water in my building for at least a decade. I worked out a deal, ten bucks a month to run a line of electricity down the stairs and into my space. Two sixty-watt bulbs hung naked in the center of the room. I knew I'd only be able to hold out there till winter. But I wasn't thinking that far ahead.

I was thinking about picking up young boys, bringing them back to spend the night, kicking them out in the morning. Becoming a den mother to a herd of fourteenand fifteen-year-old near virgins whose chastity would be forever soiled, spoiled as I sucked up little pieces of their soul in exchange for their first real fuck. Supped on their energy like an insatiable bloodsucker whose belly would never fill. Forever assuring me a bookmark in their history as they became a footnote in mine.

Remember one hot Sunday morning throwing a farewell fuck to a lucky fourteen-year-old on the sidewalk outside the storefront, while from the other side his two sidekicks jerked off. My knees were scraped for weeks.

I
was pulling the day shift at the Wild West Saloon, a cheesy go-go bar in midtown Manhattan. Cocktail waitressing to make ends meet. Still wasn't paying any rent, but I had to eat. The dancers were an exotic crew of college students, single mothers, substitute teachers, junkies, ex-junkies, and just about every other type of female who couldn't stand the typical 9–5. Some dabbled in various forms of adult entertainment, others were lifers. I was just passing through, working every scam I could think of.

Most of the women only lasted a few days or a couple of weeks. I'd pop in for a few shifts when I was completely tapped. There were any number of better places a few blocks away. But they'd ID you. And I wasn't yet eighteen. I had a few “regulars” who'd pay good money for two-minute handjobs under the sticky tables. Made it tolerable. I put up with the lewd comments and occasional slaps on the ass from the management out of pity laced with disgust.

I had a crush on the barmaid, Judy, a hardcore Irish butch. We'd turn the odd trick together, servicing obscenely obese men. We'd both sit on top, one mounting, the other shoving a juicy ass on the john's face. We'd make out with each other, biting each other's tongue to suppress the laughter.

It was a slow mid-week day. I always pulled the afternoon shifts. Although they weren't as busy as the evenings, I needed my nights free. One of the dancers came in selling tabs of acid for three bucks a pop. I downed two hits. Waited for the rush. By 6 I still hadn't come up. Thought I'd been duped.

I went into the bathroom to smoke a joint with Evie, a small Puerto Rican dancer riddled with stretch marks from shitting out two kids. She invited me over to her place for dinner and drinks. To smoke a couple of joints, good Jamaican shit. Still not tripping, I decided to accept.

We took a taxi up to Queens, feeling good after the joint. She told me the kids would be in bed, dinner in the oven, her husband had cooked up a Cuban feast of yucca, salt cod, beans, and rice. It was the first I had heard she had a husband. I just assumed that like most of the dancers she was either single, separated, or divorced. That put a new spin on things.

Her apartment was on the top floor of an old Victorian under reconstruction. You could smell the Latino aromas of pork fat and fried bananas before we left the taxi. The sexy strains of salsa music drifted down the stairs, a welcome relief after six hours of Patsy Cline's “Crazy” and Gloria Gaynor's “I Will Survive” … the stable irritants of the tittie bar.

Her husband, Castro's third cousin, greeted us at the door with a warm smile and too-tight bear hug. Urging us in, telling us to sit down, take our shoes off, we must be exhausted. Go lay down if we wanted, dinner would be ready in twenty minutes. He handed us a bottle of cheap Spanish wine and a fat joint.

Evie led me by the hand on a guided tour littered with cheap red satin love seats, worn Mexican rugs, children's toys scattered in corners, a Cuban flag draped proudly as a curtain across the huge four-poster bed, probably a family heirloom. She suggested we lay down, put our feet up. Allow the greasy edge of the Wild West to wear off. Hustling drinks in four-inch pumps for six hours straight can make you brain-dead. A little catnap to recuperate.

The soft bed, her soothing voice, and the pot began to kick in. I started to doze off almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. Bad dreams. Troubled nightmares. The acid was hitting me, in my sleep. Visions of mad butchers stringing up young girls on meat hooks. Filleting their labias with surgical instruments. Slicing off pieces of thin, bloody flesh. Female castration. Their agonizing screams shook me from my nightmare. I woke up to one of Evie's kids crying, held in the huge Cuban's hairy paw. Who stood at the foot of the bed. Watching Evie stuff her crotch in my face. I woke up tripping. Her cunt a swell before my eyes. The lips bleeding as she twisted them. Purple, pink, bloodred, wounded. A giant insect twitching its multiple folds inches from my face. I started to lose it. Freaked out. Began screaming at her husband, the mad butcher. Demanding to know what he had done … what he planned on doing to me. Why had he taken my clothes off … where were they? Threatening to tell the police if he didn't immediately call me a cab. I had to get out of there. They began screaming at each other in Spanglish, he questioning why she had brought this psycho over, she screaming he shouldn't have been watching. And both babies crying hysterically.

I grabbed my clothes and ran to the bathroom, slipped on a child's toy, and cracked my head on the mirror. They thought I was in there destroying the place. I was so fucking high I couldn't see straight. Walls bleeding into the floor, colors folding. Scrambled into my clothes. Stumbled out the door. Beeline to the exit.

Forgot the first floor was under construction. Scaffolds, ladders, drop cloths, a haunting maze difficult to navigate. I thought I'd never find the front door. I could hear the taxi honking and followed the sound. Shot into the backseat. “Manhattan, downtown, anywhere …” I could still hear the screaming babies. Kept repeating, “Calm down, you're just high.”

I could feel my pupils painfully expanding. Turning my vision fish-eye. The taxi now a warm womb bathed in pale molasses, flooded with ochre, amber, burnt sienna, gold. The streetlights loomed like melting moons. Stoplights burned new planets. I was relieved to watch the Cuban nightmare fade in the distance.

Pleasantly whacked, I no longer wanted to go home. Got dropped off at 12th Street and Third Avenue. Called James, a friend who had just moved into the city from Brooklyn, subletting a beautiful apartment. Empty other than a couch and two chairs. A loft bed in the back. He greeted me with a slippery grin, one side of his face melting in upon itself. Wearing a classic '50s smoking jacket, open to the waist, black Levi's, and leather moccasins. Himself high on acid.

At 6'7” he towered over me, his deep baritone suddenly turning soprano laugh. We'd been fucking each other every couple of weeks for a few months. Usually while tripping. Between other fucks. His bisexual tendencies fascinated me, and he'd often share hilarious details insisting on a confidentiality that was difficult to maintain. It was hard not to divulge juicy tidbits like him having to visit the emergency room to have inanimate objects removed from his rectum. Deodorant bottles, shampoo caps, plastic toys.

James asked if I'd care to join him for a drink. Invited me to get comfortable on the couch, he'd be right in to serve me. He floated into the kitchen, returning with a five-pound jar of honey. Giggling as he bent over me, pouring forth enough of the liquid coagulant to almost drown me. It boiled out over my lips, a living, breathing organism which engulfed my throat, my hair. I felt as if my entire body would be coated in a sticky mummification ritual performed by this snickering Lurch.

Scolding me as if I were a naughty child who had soiled her party dress, he insisted upon cleaning me up immediately. He gently pried open my sticky lips, scooping up fingerfuls of gooey sugar water mingled with spit. He sucked his index finger seductively, darting his tongue between his hand's fleshy web. Kneeling beside me, his flat, fat tongue and womanly lips lapped at my neck, his intoxicating mouth painting strange hieroglyphs toward my breasts. He would glue his lips to small pieces of my flesh, dissolving the thick honey into our skins. Drawing arcane symbols with tongue and teeth. Suckling then chewing on my tight little nipples until I thought I'd left my body. A large, slow animal feasting on fresh meat.

It was close to midnight when the third rush hit. Twelve hours after I had ingested the shit. Still flying. We had showered together like a lopsided brother and sister, conspiring on the mischief to follow. We decided to stage an orgy. Playing the centerpieces. Dressed in towels as saris and turbans, we began phoning everyone we knew. Whether we had sexed them already or not. Inviting them to come over and fuck us. After the first initial rejections, we became even bolder, randomly dialing numbers like a lottery. Our hysteria and manic tone ensured that the invitations would remain unheeded.

Slightly disappointed, we decided to fuck each other, until a bicycle left in an empty closet caught our attention. It struck us as the most ridiculous instrument we'd ever seen. Armed with dull butter knives, we began to dismantle it. Removing the tires, rims, spokes from the rims, the seat, the handlebars. Giggling like idiots, howling with laughter, we began to throw pieces out the window into the concrete courtyard three stories below. The hideous clamor chimed to us like church bells at a family picnic. We'd spasm with laughter every time another useless piece was launched overboard, shouting out punch lines from juvenile poetry.

We passed out at 4, after a couple hours of light diddling. High, exhausted, spent from laughing so much, we finally collapsed. I woke a few hours later greeted by three cops in riot gear. Chatting over steaming cups of coffee, admiring my nudity. I had no idea how long they had been standing there. Was surprised they hadn't taken liberties with my inebriate form. Or maybe they had and I was too fucked up to notice. I asked them if they had a coffee for me. They laughed, insisting they had more than coffee … I bantered that if they were looking for recruits, they had landed on the wrong planet. I was terminally unemployable. And what the hell were they doing here anyway? They claimed they were sent to investigate a “disturbance.” They got the call six hours before.

Typical.

I had no idea where my host had gone. Maybe work. He was publishing fraudulent biographies and selling them to Europe. He'd pick on someone he truly hated, like Michael Douglas or Motley Crüe, and pen two-hundred-page bio's based on the worst bullshit he could make up. As if anything could be possibly worse than how truly awful they really were. Anyway, I needed to get dressed, needed fresh air to stave off the migraine licking at my frontal lobes. I informed the officers if there was nothing more I could do for them, to please leave. The fat bald Italian whispered, “Ohh … there's plenty you could do …” squeezing his nightstick in both hands. The fat tip of a coffee-stained tongue darting obscenely across his blistered lower lip. A gruesome vision which I struggled to shake off.