Dance Of The Sugar Plum Lesbians

This story makes its eleventh annual appearance on JMG....

Grand Central Terminal functions as the mechanical heart of midtown New York City, pumping out several thousand workers and tourists on one beat, then sucking in several thousand more on the next.

The rhythms of the terminal are fascinating.

Beat. Four thousand, inbound from New Haven.

Beat. Three thousand, outbound to Westchester.

Worlds collide on the main floor.

The tourists gawk up at the gloriously ornate ceiling and uselessly flash their digital cameras at objects hundreds of feet away.

The commuters rush up to the track displays to determine their track number, then dart across the terminal floor, dodging the milling tourists, heads down, like running backs heading for the end zone.

It's mesmerizing. It's majestic.

And sometimes, like tonight, it's magical.

I'm walking through the massive main room just as the holiday laser show begins on the ceiling. To the tune of Take The "A" Train, the laser depicts two trains arriving from different directions. The trains stop opposite each other and a reindeer leaps out of each one and crosses over to the opposite train.

The laser traces the outline of one of the zodiac constellations painted on the ceiling. The Cancer crab leaps to life and becomes the Crab Conductor, waddling down the center aisle of the car, punching the reindeers' ticket stubs with his claws.

I move over to the edge of the room, near the entrance for Track 25, so I can watch the reaction to the show. As usual, I'm more entertained by watching the audience than by watching the actual show.

At the ticket windows, standing in front of signs that say "Harlem Line" or "Hudson Line", commuters tilt their heads painfully back to view the show directly overhead. The tourists cluster in delighted circles, holding each others' elbows for balance as they nearly bend over backwards.

Some people move to the edges of the great hall, as I have, to remove themselves from the traffic flow while they watch. Among those that come to join me on the perimeter of the room is a lesbian couple. They stand quite close to me, the taller woman behind the shorter one, with her arms wrapped around her, supporting her a bit as they both lean back on the marble wall.

The shorter woman is stout with a large firm chest. Her hair is short and brushed back into what might have once been called a ducktail. She has an ornate tattoo on her left forearm and she has a leather wallet protruding from the rear pocket of her jeans, attached to her leather belt by a short silver chain. She has more than a passing resemblance to Tony Danza, her big boobs notwithstanding, so naturally (in my head) I name her Toni.

Toni's girlfriend is blond and her short ponytail dangles just above her collar. She is wearing long Christmas tree earrings which nearly brush her shoulders. Her lanky, sinewy limbs are bound in a tight running outfit, over which she is wearing a school athletic jacket. I imagine that she might be a coach at Yale or Harvard, perhaps a girls lacrosse coach, or maybe track and field.

Coach is squeezing Toni tightly and they bounce together to the music a bit. Coach looks over at me and catches me smiling. She nudges Toni, who looks over at me too, and we all grin goofily at each other for a moment.

Overhead, a new show begins. The familiar opening notes of Tchaikovsky's Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies ring out as the Empire State and the Chrysler buildings sprout arms, bow to each other, and begin waltzing across the ceiling.

I look around the room and it's as if time was frozen for just a second, every person stopped in mid-stride, eyes cast upward, mouths open in silent joy.

Toni pushes away from Coach, turns around and delivers her a bow as deep and as elegant as the one just depicted overheard.

"Madame, may I please have this dance?" she asks Coach.

Coach looks around a bit awkwardly. "You are TOO much!" And she giggles.

"Madame, I must insist!" says Toni, as she takes Coach's hands into hers.

Coach relents and she and Toni begin a beautiful, slow waltz, moving in half-time to the music. As you might have guessed already, Toni leads.

As they dance, their eyes remain locked on each other. Toni is giving Coach an intense look, her lips tightly curled into a satisfied smile. Coach is grinning from ear to ear and again, she giggles.

All around Coach and Toni, the tourists, the businessmen, the students, the conductors, even the guy with a broom...they're all watching. Some are expressionless, but more are smiling, and some of them...some of them are frantically fussing with their cameras, eager to capture this magical New York Moment.

Serendipity prevails, the tune ends, and Toni dips Coach backwards with a dramatic up-sweep of her free arm as a firestorm of camera flashes erupt around them. Toni pulls Coach up and close to her and they hug. There's another camera flash and the crowd begins to move along.

Then.

"Hey, look!"

The laser show is being concluded with giant sprigs of mistletoe appearing over our heads. This time it's Coach who bends down and plants a long tender kiss on Toni's non-lipsticked mouth. There's another flash of cameras from the delighted audience.

Toni takes Coach's hand and they begin to move off towards the exit.

"Oh, don't stop!" says a disappointed woman, still rummaging for her camera.

Toni looks back over her shoulder and says, "I never will."

Grand Central Terminal, the mechanical heart of New York City, beats again. But this time I hear a different rhythm. This time I hear a double beat.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBODY!

Ricky Loved Madonna

Gentle readers, today is Madonna's 56th birthday. Below is a short story that first appeared on JMG on this day in 2006, a date which, as you'll see, plays a role in the story.


Ricky Loved Madonna

Twenty years ago today, August 16th 1986, I was a few months into a new job with AMC Theatres, a position that I would hold for seven years after having spent a few years after college drifting around bartending and DJing. After burning through three DJ gigs in about a year, I took the management job with AMC almost in desperation, happy to finally have a regular paycheck. I bought my first brand new car. I had several dozen underlings. I had a business card. I felt like a grown-up, almost.

Twenty years ago today, it was a Saturday. As the assistant manager, I had to be at the theater at 10am even though I had closed the midnight shows the night before, not getting home until almost 4am. I stumbled through the still-unfamiliar opening procedures. My mind was on Ricky. I took the cash drawers out to the concession stand and the box office and turned on the air conditioners and lights in all the auditoriums. The first movie, a Disney cartoon, started at 11:30am and we had hundreds of people in front of the box office before I even rolled up the mall gates.

Twenty years ago today, the night before was a Friday. It was the opening night of the remake of The Fly starring Jeff Goldblum. My six-plex was jamming. The Fly sold out at every show, driving the overflow audiences into Top Gun and Aliens, which were still doing decent business on their own. All six auditoriums sold out by 8pm and I rushed to get that show's money counted before the first of the auditoriums began to let out and we had to start the process all over again. I pushed into the counting room inside the manager's office and dumped several thousand in $20s onto the countertop.

The intercom buzzed.

"Mr. J., there's a man here to see you."

In the lobby was my friend Todd. "Joe, I'm on my way to see Ricky. Can you come? He's worse."

I looked out into the mall where hundreds of teenagers milled around in front of closed storefronts. The Interstate Mall was on its last legs. All that was left within view was the theater, a pinball arcade, an adult novelty shop, and the driver's license bureau, which was closed at that hour. The teens roamed the broad unswept avenue of the mall in swirling, shrieking packs, anxious for the late show to begin.

I shook my head. "Todd, I'm the only one here. I have the late show and then the midnights. The last movie doesn't let out until almost 3am. I have to lock up." Todd nodded and made a move like he was going to hug me, then realized that a dozen of my employees were watching. Awkwardly, he stuck out his hand as if that's what he'd intended all along. I shook it and he left. I had never shaken Todd's hand before.

Twenty years ago today, one week earlier, Ricky went into the hospital. He'd had a seizure on the bathroom floor of his sister's condo. Todd and I went to the hospital the next day and found him lying unconscious in his bed, unattended, in a pool of feces. Todd staggered into the hallway and tried to control his retching while I looked for a nurse. At the nurses' station, the stout Jamaican woman behind the counter nodded curtly but didn't get out of her chair when I asked that Ricky receive some attention. I went back to find Todd sitting out in the lounge.

"Joe, I can't be here. I'm freaking out. Do you know we walked right in there without a mask on?"

"I think the mask is more for him than us....so if..."

"I have to go."

At Todd's insistence we stopped at the Burger King a few blocks away and washed our hands. Even though we hadn't touched Ricky or anything but the door of his hospital room, we scrubbed the front and backs of our hands like we'd seen surgeons do on television.

Twenty years ago today, two weeks earlier, Todd and I dropped in at Ricky's sister's condo. Ricky had been forced to move in with her. He'd lost his job at the giant hotel near Disney where he'd been training to be a pastry chef. For a long time he'd managed to keep his illness a secret, wearing long shirts even in the hot kitchen so that nobody saw the purple lesions that were marching inexorably from his elbows to his wrists. A lesion appeared on the back of his hand and that one he covered with make-up, but when one appeared right on the tip of his nose, the head chef and head of human resources had called him in on his day off to fire him. Surely he understood, they told him, that they couldn't have him handling food. 

When Ricky's sister opened the door, she made a face. "He's not feeling well." She'd already made it clear to Todd on his previous visit that she did not like her brother's "friends." Todd said quickly, "Oh, well, we just wanted to drop off a present for him." I had Madonna's latest release, True Blue, on CD in a sparkly bag. We knew that he'd gotten the vinyl album earlier in the summer, but since he was such a big fan, we knew he'd like to have the CD version too.

His sister led us into the bedroom where we found Ricky shrouded in blankets and watching television. He was cranky and inattentive to us, but momentarily brightened when we gave him the CD. He examined the cover. "It's the same as the album, just smaller." He didn't have a player, hardly anyone did yet, so he laid the longbox reverently on his nightstand, propped against the lamp. His sister hovered in the doorway, smoking, anxious for our departure, and we soon obliged her.

Twenty years ago today, three months earlier, I met Ricky for the first time at a party thrown by Todd. I'd heard from Todd that Ricky was "sick," as we nervously called it back then, but he seemed fine to me. We stood outside on the patio and watched guys jumping into the pool.

Ricky said, "So what do you do, Joe?"

I said, "Well I just started working for AMC Theatres."

Ricky screamed a little bit. "Which ONE?"

I stepped back. "Interstate Six, why?"

"Because I am in there ALL the time. I saw At Close Range about five times just to hear Madonna's song in it!"

"She wasn't in the movie, was she?"

"No, but I'm just a freak for her." He paused, then added dramatically, "We have the same birthday!"

"Oh....really." I began to look around for Todd.

Ricky began to get very animated and his words tumbled out. "Yes. Same day, same year. I was born exactly at midnight and my mother always said I could have August 15 or August 16 for my birthday - it was my choice - and for the longest time I had it on August 15 cuz that's Julia Child's birthday and she's a chef and I wanted to be chef and so she was my idol when I was little. Such a fag, right? Anyway, when Madonna came out and I found out her birthday, I was all...that's IT. I'm August 16 from now on!"

Ricky continued professing his undying love for Madonna until I was finally able to make a graceful escape. Later, Todd told me that Ricky had dressed as Madonna for the previous Halloween and belonged to her mail-order fan club and we laughed a little bit at his adorably nutty fandom.

Twenty years ago today, August 16th 1986, it was a Saturday. The theater had brisk business for the morning show, selling out the Disney movie. After all the houses were rolling, I pulled the money from the box office and sat alone in the office to count it. I turned on the radio so I could hear Casey Kasem counting down the Top 40.

Todd called. "Well, the hospital just told me Ricky died around midnight last night."

"Oh, no. Did you get in to see him...before.....?"

"No, his sister and mother were there, so I just left without going in."

"Right." That's how it often went back then.

Todd hung up and I sat there finishing up my money counting. I didn't know how to feel. I really couldn't call Ricky a friend. I had to count and recount the money several times, I kept losing my place. Then I heard Casey Kasem say, "Hitting number one today is Madonna with Papa Don't Preach."

I called Todd back. "So, did they give you a time of death for Ricky?"

"Yeah, midnight."

"Right, but is that today or yesterday?"

"What?"

"Well, today is his birthday and it's Madonna's birthday and I just heard that she's number one today...and.....it would be, you know, sorta nice if it was today."

"What the fuck is nice about dying on your BIRTHDAY?"

We never talked about it again. I never did find out what day was listed for Ricky's death. As the years went on and Madonna's fame increased, the press began to note her birthday. And ever since that started, I think of Ricky on August 16th. I never knew Ricky's last name. He wasn't a close friend. But he has stuck with me over these two decades.

Twenty years ago today, Ricky, aged 28, died on his birthday. I will always hope that it was his August 16th birthday. Ricky loved Madonna.

Two Muddy Pills

Gentle readers, many of you who've been here since the early years will recall that this here website thingy launched as a place for my short stories. In honor of today's tenth anniversary of JMG, below is a piece from my cache of unpublished stories. I first read this story in public before an audience of several hundred at last year's Broadway Cares forum on AIDS survivorship.

Two Muddy Pills

Ever since his HIV diagnosis in the mid-90s Rob had retreated from social life. He’d stopped going to clubs and he begged off party invitations. The gay male world had divided itself into two hemispheres, a division exemplified in AOL profiles where the uninfected often described themselves as "clean," meaning by inference that the HIV+ were dirty, dangerous, untouchable. Some positive men rebelled against this caste system, boldly announcing their status on t-shirts or with darkly humorous "biohazard" tattoos. But not Rob. He simply…disappeared.

In 1996 the FDA approved the protease inhibitor Crixivan, a drug that often caused dramatic facial wasting. This new and highly visible sign of HIV infection could not be cloaked by hours at the gym and men could often accurately diagnosis one’s status at a glance. And as they’d done with tattoos, some positive men took ownership of what had become known to some as the "Crixivan crease." My favorite example of this was my acquaintance who assumed the internet handle, Crixi Van Cheek.

But Crixivan also caused many positive men to rebound spectacularly. Viral loads plummeted. Energy levels surged. Optimism soared. Rob was one of those men and with my encouragement, he finally accepted a date set up by a mutual friend. The evening started out great, with both men eagerly sharing their mutual interest in old cars and (to my mind) a rather disturbing devotion to Stephen Sondheim.

After dinner, Rob and his date moved on for drinks at a posh lounge, where mistakenly believing that the other man had been made aware of his status, Rob took out his small pill box for his end-of-day Crixivan dose. You weren’t supposed to eat for an hour before or two hours after each of the three daily doses, which meant no food for a total of nine waking hours every day. Rob’s date watched silently, then put his drink down and walked out of the bar.

Almost another year passed before Rob would again socialize and that was only because it was Halloween, his favorite holiday. I’d gifted him with an expensive ticket to a gigantic dance party held at a cavernous warehouse, where the hired security was clearly unhappy to be confronted with thousands of shirtless gay men. We took position at a centrally-located bar where Rob immediately drew the interest of a nearby handsome bearded man, who smiled approvingly at Rob’s gladiator costume. The two exchanged flirty looks, but Rob, still completely gun-shy, refused to go speak to him.

At midnight it was time for Rob to take his Crixivan and from inside his pocket he deftly tapped the pills out of their box and into his palm. He stole another look at Bearded Man, who was still staring over at him. “Shit. I don’t want him to see me take these," he muttered.  I said, "You two are already not-fucking. What’s the worst thing that will happen if he finds out you’re poz? You’re going to not-fuck MORE?" Rob shook his head. “Just let me have this cruising fantasy for tonight, OK?” I suggested taking the pills in the men’s room.  Rob snorted, "The line’s a mile long and hello, security is in there watching for people taking pills.” I said, "Well, just go outside."  Rob said, “What if there’s no ins and outs?”

The pills remained in his hand.

A minute later a giant drag queen crashed into a barback, sending a tray of glasses tumbling onto the bar. Rob took advantage of the distraction and casually tossed the pills towards his mouth. The capsules bounced off his chin and fell into a muddy puddle at the foot of the bar. Horrified, he glanced over at Bearded Man, who was walking over.  Bearded Man scooped the wet pills from the floor and examined them. "Yuck. They’re falling apart. Crixivan, right?" Rob could only manage a slight nod. Bearded Man smiled. "I’ve got some in my truck if you wanna take a walk." Rob turned questioningly to me and I practically shoved him. "GO."

I watched them head to the coat check and then disappear through the giant rubber strips that defined the entrance to the warehouse. They never came back that night, but it wasn’t because of any "no ins and outs" rule. Halloween 2014 will be their 17th anniversary.

Dance Of The Sugar Plum Lesbians

This story makes its ninth annual appearance on JMG....

Grand Central Terminal functions as the mechanical heart of midtown New York City, pumping out several thousand workers and tourists on one beat, then sucking in several thousand more on the next.

The rhythms of the terminal are fascinating.

Beat. Four thousand, inbound from New Haven.

Beat. Three thousand, outbound to Westchester.

Worlds collide on the main floor.

The tourists gawk up at the gloriously ornate ceiling and uselessly flash their digital cameras at objects hundreds of feet away.

The commuters rush up to the track displays to determine their track number, then dart across the terminal floor, dodging the milling tourists, heads down, like running backs heading for the end zone.

It's mesmerizing. It's majestic.

And sometimes, like tonight, it's magical.

I'm walking through the massive main room just as the holiday laser show begins on the ceiling. To the tune of Take The "A" Train, the laser depicts two trains arriving from different directions. The trains stop opposite each other and a reindeer leaps out of each one and crosses over to the opposite train.

The laser traces the outline of one of the zodiac constellations painted on the ceiling. The Cancer crab leaps to life and becomes the Crab Conductor, waddling down the center aisle of the car, punching the reindeers' ticket stubs with his claws.

I move over to the edge of the room, near the entrance for Track 25, so I can watch the reaction to the show. As usual, I'm more entertained by watching the audience than by watching the actual show.

At the ticket windows, standing in front of signs that say "Harlem Line" or "Hudson Line", commuters tilt their heads painfully back to view the show directly overhead. The tourists cluster in delighted circles, holding each others' elbows for balance as they nearly bend over backwards.

Some people move to the edges of the great hall, as I have, to remove themselves from the traffic flow while they watch. Among those that come to join me on the perimeter of the room is a lesbian couple. They stand quite close to me, the taller woman behind the shorter one, with her arms wrapped around her, supporting her a bit as they both lean back on the marble wall.

The shorter woman is stout with a large firm chest. Her hair is short and brushed back into what might have once been called a ducktail. She has an ornate tattoo on her left forearm and she has a leather wallet protruding from the rear pocket of her jeans, attached to her leather belt by a short silver chain. She has more than a passing resemblance to Tony Danza, her big boobs notwithstanding, so naturally (in my head) I name her Toni.

Toni's girlfriend is blond and her short ponytail dangles just above her collar. She is wearing long Christmas tree earrings which nearly brush her shoulders. Her lanky, sinewy limbs are bound in a tight running outfit, over which she is wearing a school athletic jacket. I imagine that she might be a coach at Yale or Harvard, perhaps a girls lacrosse coach, or maybe track and field.

Coach is squeezing Toni tightly and they bounce together to the music a bit. Coach looks over at me and catches me smiling. She nudges Toni, who looks over at me too, and we all grin goofily at each other for a moment.

Overhead, a new show begins. The familiar opening notes of Tchaikovsky's Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies ring out as the Empire State and the Chrysler buildings sprout arms, bow to each other, and begin waltzing across the ceiling.

I look around the room and it's as if time was frozen for just a second, every person stopped in mid-stride, eyes cast upward, mouths open in silent joy.

Toni pushes away from Coach, turns around and delivers her a bow as deep and as elegant as the one just depicted overheard.

"Madame, may I please have this dance?" she asks Coach.

Coach looks around a bit awkwardly. "You are TOO much!" And she giggles.

"Madame, I must insist!" says Toni, as she takes Coach's hands into hers.

Coach relents and she and Toni begin a beautiful, slow waltz, moving in half-time to the music. As you might have guessed already, Toni leads.

As they dance, their eyes remain locked on each other. Toni is giving Coach an intense look, her lips tightly curled into a satisfied smile. Coach is grinning from ear to ear and again, she giggles.

All around Coach and Toni, the tourists, the businessmen, the students, the conductors, even the guy with a broom...they're all watching. Some are expressionless, but more are smiling, and some of them...some of them are frantically fussing with their cameras, eager to capture this magical New York Moment.

Serendipity prevails, the tune ends, and Toni dips Coach backwards with a dramatic up-sweep of her free arm as a firestorm of camera flashes erupt around them. Toni pulls Coach up and close to her and they hug. There's another camera flash and the crowd begins to move along.

Then.

"Hey, look!"

The laser show is being concluded with giant sprigs of mistletoe appearing over our heads. This time it's Coach who bends down and plants a long tender kiss on Toni's non-lipsticked mouth. There's another flash of cameras from the delighted audience.

Toni takes Coach's hand and they begin to move off towards the exit.

"Oh, don't stop!" says a disappointed woman, still rummaging for her camera.

Toni looks back over her shoulder and says, "I never will."

Grand Central Terminal, the mechanical heart of New York City, beats again. But this time I hear a different rhythm. This time I hear a double beat.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBODY!

Membership

ABOVE: At the 1985 Xmas party described below: Me, Michael, and Barney. I also wrote about Barney here.

Originally posted May 2004. Reposted for World AIDS Day.

Membership 

Michael didn't look good.

We were at his annual Christmas Luau party. Tons and tons of people in the house and the backyard. Standing in his kitchen, wearing a grass skirt and a ridiculous Santa hat covered in sequins, he was acting like always...all flamboyant and silly and adorable.

But he didn't look...right.

It was 1985.

My boyfriend Ken and I stayed until the end of the party to help clean up. I busied myself in the kitchen, washing glasses and cleaning ashtrays. Through the kitchen window I watched Ken and Michael in the backyard where they were stacking up the chairs and dousing the dozens of tiki torches, the trademark of Michael's party. When we were finished, Ken and I stood for a few minutes on Michael's front porch to review the party: who came, who didn't, who shouldn't have come.

Finally I yawned and stretched and nudged Ken. "C'mon babe, let's roll. Michael, lots of fun as always. Try and get some sleep, you look like you need it."

Ken shot me a scowl.

I tried to recover. "I mean, you must be exhausted from getting the party ready."

Michael laughed and lit a cigarette. "Oh, you know me. I'll bounce back. Nothing that can't be cured by cigarettes, coffee and cocaine!"

We giggled and waved and headed down the driveway. When we reached our car, I looked back at the house. Michael was struggling with the garbage cans, then broke into a hacking cough.

For the first few minutes of our ride home, Ken and I didn't say anything. Then at a traffic light, I looked over at him. "Didn't you think Michael..."

"He's FINE!" Ken cut me off.

"You didn't think he looked kinda thin? And that coughing..."

"Well, you know he smokes too much. And you'd look worn out too if YOU threw a Christmas party for 100 people."

"Yeah, I guess."

Ken knew what I was talking about, even if we didn't actually talk about it. For two years, maybe three, we'd been following the developing story about AIDS. At first, the press was calling it "gay cancer." Then GRID. Gay Related Immune Disorder. Then AIDS.

We lived in Orlando. Almost all the cases were in New York or San Francisco and that made us feel safe in a strange way. Neither of us had been in either place, except as children. And we didn't have any friends from either city. Then Miami began to report cases.

Michael was from Miami.

A week after his Christmas party, on New Year's Eve out at the club, Michael uncharacteristically left early. Before midnight. He said his hip was bothering him. Our friend Jack teased him as he was leaving. "Oh, is Grandpa having some problems with his rheumatiz?"

Michael just smiled and blew us kisses from across the room and limped out.

A few weeks later Ken called me from his office. He was going to take Michael to the hospital. His hip was terribly infected, and he couldn't walk. I didn't ask him what was wrong, by now we knew. And Michael knew that we did.

Waiting for Ken to come home, I watched a TV report on AIDS. Specifically, it dealt with how funeral parlors were sometimes refusing to handle the bodies of AIDS patients. Fear of infection. Fear of loss of reputation. The narrator made a comment about the families and friends of those killed by AIDS. He called them "this new and modern group" of grievers. When Ken got home, I told him about the story with indignation.

Over the next few months, Michael was in the hospital quite a bit. Ken got into the habit of visiting him on his way home from work, something I could rarely do since I worked nights. When I did see Michael, he looked progressively worse. Skinnier, more pale, his skin patchy and scaly.

But he always had that bitchy sense of humor and that chicken cackle. I'd hear that laugh from down the hallway as I approached his room, which always seemed to be full of friends.

Florida started its state lottery that summer. On the first night of the big drawing, I tried to stay awake for the results but I fell asleep with the tickets in my hands. I was awakened by Ken sitting on the bed.

"Hey." I rolled over and looked at the clock. Three in the morning?

Ken still had his tie on. My throat clenched. I don't know why, but I pushed the lottery tickets over towards him.

"So, um...are we millionaires?"

Ken didn't answer me.

"Where have you been? At the hospital? How's Michael?"

Ken leaned over and started untying his shoes. He pulled them off and finally turned to face me. He looked so very tired. He laid down next to me and hugged me, then spoke softly into my ear.

"We've just joined that new and modern group."

Watching The Defectives

Gentle readers, I'm rerunning my annual Pride rant for the eighth year. I wrote this post in 2005 a couple of days after attending Pride here in NYC. In the following years I've reposted it in advance of the day in the hope of encouraging you to attend. My apologies to those that have read it before. Have a wonderful Pride. Love each other.

Watching The Defectives

Last Sunday at 12:30pm, I was in position on Christopher Street with Terrence, his glamor boys, and touring UK bloggers Dave and Darren. The Pride parade was due to round the corner any minute, but I tore off in search of a bodega, crossing my fingers that my desperate need for a soda wouldn't cause me to miss Dykes On Bikes. Half a block away, I found a little place and ducked in, weaving through the customers clogging the aisles on rushed missions like mine. I was third in line, two bottles of Sprite under my arm, when the man in front of me spotted a friend entering the store.

"David! Sweetie! Where are you watching from? Come hang out with us on Allen's balcony!"

David, a bookish looking middle-aged man, destroyed the festive mood in the little store in an instant. "Absolutely not. Those defectives and freaks?" he spat, indicating the colorful crowd outside the store, "They have nothing to do with MY life, thank you very much. This parade has as much dignity as a carnival freak show. It's no wonder the whole country hates us."

Luckily for David, the Asshole Killer mind ray I've been working on is not yet operational. I settled for pushing him a little, just a tiny bit, just to get by him in that narrow aisle, of course. I returned to my sweaty little group and tried to put what I'd heard out of my mind for the remainder of the day, because I knew that by the next morning, the thousands of Davids of the world, the ones who have media access anyway, would all issue their now familiar day-after-Pride rant. The one where they decry the drag queens on all those newspaper front pages. The one where they beat their chests and lament, "Why don't the papers ever show the NORMAL gay people? Where are the bankers and lawyers? Why must all the coverage be drag queens and leather freaks in assless chaps?"

And every year, the logical answer is that bankers and lawyers are boring to look at and that pictures of marching Gap employees don't sell newspapers. There's no sinister media agenda intent on making gay people look ridiculous, no fag-hating cabal behind the annual front page explosion of sequins and feathers. It's just good copy. Drag queens are interesting. Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones.

Yet right on cue, the day after Pride, the Davids of the blogosphere dished out their heavy-handed dissections of parades around the country. Only this year, there was a palpably nastier tone to an already traditionally nasty annual debate. Blame the election, blame the recent avalanche of anti-gay legislation, but this year, the usual assimilationist arguments went beyond the hypothetical speculations that maybe our Pride parades were too outlandish, that maybe we weren't doing the movement any favors by showing the country a face that happened to be wearing 6-inch long false eyelashes. This year there was some actual discussion about HOW we were going to "fix" Pride parades. Of how we might go about "discouraging" certain "elements" from taking part in the parades.

This is the part of the story where I have my annual post-Pride apoplectic attack. This is the part of the story where the swelling volume of Nazi analogies overwhelm my ability to speak and all I can do is twitch and bark out little nonsensical bits. This is where I always forget the name given to the Jews who went to work for the Nazis, helping load the trains. "Because that's what you are asking us to do, you assholes!" Then I always ask, "Who are we going to sacrifice to 'save' ourselves? Which child will it be, Sophie?" And this is the part of the story where my friends accuse me of being a hyperbole-laden drama queen, wasting spiritual energy on a non-crisis, and of co-opting the Holocaust as well. More on that later.

These people that want to "fix" Pride don't understand the role that Pride parades have come to play. Initially, the gay parade was about visibility. It was about safety in numbers, and more importantly, "normalcy" in numbers. It was about the idea that if only straight America could see us, could just SEE US, that they'd love us. And accept us. That if we'd mass and march by the righteous millions, the sheer unstoppable force of our collective image would topple bigotry. Would right wrongs. Would stop hate.

Of course, that didn't happen then and it doesn't happen now.

What DOES happen, is that Pride parades, at least in the big cities, have become nothing more significant to straight America than an annual traffic nightmare. As a tool of the gay movement, the Pride parade is now merely a walking photo op for politicians and perhaps not much more. A couple of years ago, the ultimate arbiter of America's cultural zeitgeist, The Simpsons, made note of this:

(The gay pride parade is going past the Simpson house.)

Chanting marchers: "We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!"

Lisa Simpson: "You're here every year. We ARE used to it."

What does all of this mean to the Davids of the world, the gay assimilationists that want to, wish they could, somebody do something, there's gotta be a way we can, Dignify This Parade? The ones begging: "Can't we get our people to at least DRESS respectfully for one lousy day? Is that too much to ask of our people? "

Yes, yes it is.

Because you are kidding yourself if you think Pride parades, in any form, will EVER change the minds of homophobes. The straight people who show up to see Pride parades are already largely convinced. We're parading to the choir, Jesse. Those straight people love our freaks, bless them.

Oh, you could test run a "defective" free parade. You could form urban anti-drag squads and go around to all the gayborhoods on the morning of the parade and give all the drag queens 50% off coupons for Loehmann's, offer good during the parade only. And they'd GO, of course, cuz hey, those girls love a bargain. But the resultant bland, humorless, "normal" gay parade wouldn't change the course of the gay movement one bit. The part of straight America that is repulsed by drag queens is quite possibly even more terrified by the so-called "normal" gays, because "those clever calculating creatures look JUST LIKE US, and can infiltrate and get access to our precious children. And that's been their disgusting plan all along, of course."

So where does that leave us? Are we post-Pride? Is the parade just a colossally long waste of a miserably hot summer day? Is the Pride parade just an event that does a better job of moving chicken-on-a-stick than it does of moving hearts? I'd say that, yes, as an effective tool of the gay movement, Pride's usefulness has largely waned in many U.S. cities. So do we even need to keep having these parades, since they no longer seem to have much of an impact on the state of the movement? No, we don't.

But...YES, WE DO.

Because even if Pride doesn't change many minds in the outside world, it's our PARTY, darlings. It's our Christmas, our New Year's, our Carnival. It's the one day of the year that all the crazy contingents of the gay world actually come face to face on the street and blow each other air kisses. And wish each other "Happy Pride!" Saying "Happy Pride!" is really just a shorter, easier way of saying "Congratulations on not being driven completely batshit insane! Way to go for not taking a rifle into a tower and taking out half the town! Well done, being YOURSELF!"

I'm not worried what the outside world thinks about the drag queens, the topless bulldaggers, or the nearly naked leatherfolk. It's OUR party, bitches. If you think that straight America would finally pull its homokinder to its star-spangled bosom once we put down that glitter gun, then you are seriously deluding yourself. Next year, if one of the Christian camera crews that show up to film our "debauched" celebrations happen to train their cameras on you, stop dancing. And start PRANCING.

All you suburban, lawn mowing, corpo-droid homos out there, hiding behind your picket fences, the ones wringing your hands and worrying that Pride ruins YOUR personal rep, listen up. Do you think that straight Americans worry that Mardi Gras damages international perception of American culture? America, land of the free, home of "Show Us Your Tits!"? They don't and neither should we. Our Pride celebrations are just our own unique version of Mardi Gras, only instead of throwing beads, we throw shade. No one has to ask US to show our tits. We've already got 'em out there, baby. And some of them are real.

A co-worker of mine heard me discussing my Pride plans last weekend and said, "I really don't understand what it is you are proud about. I mean, you all say that you are born that way, so it's not like you accomplished anything." She wasn't being mean, just genuinely curious, and I think that a lot of gay people probably feel the same way. On this subject, I can only speak for myself.

I'm proud because I'm a middle-aged gay man who has more dead friends than living ones and yet I'm not completely insane. I've lived through a personal Holocaust (here we go again) in which my friends and lovers have been mowed down as thoroughly and randomly as the S.S guards moved down the line of Jews. You, dead. You, to the factory. And you, you, you, and you, dead. I am inexplicably alive and I am proud that I keep the memories of my friends alive. I am proud of my people, the ACT-UPers, the Quilt makers, the Larry Kramers, the Harvey Fiersteins. I'm proud that I'm not constantly curled up into a ball on my bed, clutching photo albums and sobbing. And that happens sometimes, believe it.

And outside of my personal experiences, I am proud of my tribe as a group. Sometimes I think that gay people are more creative, more empathic, more intuitive, more generous, and more selfless than anybody else on the planet. Sometimes I think that if an alien culture were surveying our planet from light years away, they might classify gay people as an entirely separate species of humans. It's easy to spot us because of our better haircuts.

But sometimes I think we are the worst people in the entire world when it comes to standing up for each other. The gay people who'd like to soothe their personal image problems by selectively culling some of our children from Pride events? They disgust me. They appall me. They embarrass me. To them I say: The very road that YOU now have the privilege of swaggering upon was paved by those very queens and leather freaks that you complain about as you practice your "masculine" and give us butch face. If you want to live in the house that THEY BUILT, you better act like you fucking know it. United we stand, you snide bitches. America's kulturkampf ain't gonna be solved by making flamboyant people go away.

I'll end this by making one final Jewish reference. Possibly you've heard the Jewish in-joke that sums up the meaning of all Jewish holidays? "They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat." My Pride version?

They wish we were invisible.

We're not.

Let's dance.

Mr. Fleet Week

Originally posted May 28th, 2007

Mr. Fleet Week is climaxing. Waist-deep in the Hudson River he stands, back arched, toes curling, straining...UGH...to blow his patriotic load of bipedal cannon fodder one last time over America's well-fingered g-spot, Midtown Manhattan. That spot, after six nights of polite (compared to the locals) but woefully unskilled (ditto) attention, is currently wavering perilously between grateful, exhausted satiety and "not tonight fuckwads, I have a headache." As I watch the streets of Gotham swell a final time with jarheads and swabbies - all of them young perfect happy bounding eager horny puppies, their arrival again strikes me with feelings of envy and apprehension. They also make me think of boobies, but we'll get to that in a bit.

The enlisted men, who comprise a mammoth portion of the visiting servicefolk, trod confidently, five abreast, down the almost deserted streets of midtown, streets that only hours earlier were abandoned by legions of locals fleeing to their summer refuges in the Hamptons, Fire Island, Newport, Cape Cod. The swabbies stream past posh drinkeries where smiling men in suits stand at the open doors, welcoming all. (They have spirited away the "not you, maybe you, never you" ropes.) Hey Navy! No cover! Fleet Week specials! The jarheads that come inside are probably well-aware that if they were employees here, they'd likely always be "back of the house" material to most of these beaming restaurateurs, who this week are eagerly waving Puerto Rican gunners and Mexico-born supply clerks into their depopulated VIP sections. But it's OK. Everybody who's anybody is out of town.

The swabbies don't know that the folks who live behind the darkened-till-September windows of that fly penthouse duplex (with roof garden access!) consider Fleet Week the start of the "stink season," an expression that means exactly what you think it doesn't. These are the Ugly New Yorkers, the folks who spend a rilly, rilly unappealing amount of their time making it loudly known that Manhattan is the only place in the world to live if you are a Worthwhile and/or Important Person. (Except, you know, in the summer, when it isn't.) We hate them. And if we had a bajillion dollars we would go right out and buy a ginormous house in Upper Hamptaukategue Bay-On-Ocean and spend all summer long glaring at them from the cabana on our private beach. We'd give those plus-one Conde Nasties and guest list Viacommies a frowning they wouldn't soon forget, we tell you what. 'Course, all that frowning would be one way, cuz...well, you know.

Sorry. Back to reality. On the corner of 10th Avenue and 50th, street vendors have cagily created a push-cart gauntlet, an obstacle course of crapola. Later tonight, this Spanglish Armada of bootleg reggaeton CDs, counterfeit Yankee hats and Twin Towers snow globes will prove irresistible to beer-goggled ensigns as they stagger towards the forbidding superstructure of the U.S.S. Wasp, which intimidates even the nearby Notable NYC Landmarks. And they are Official Kodak Photo Spots (™), so that there's some high-end intimidatin', missy. Must be the nuke-tipped missiles. The vendors lie in wait, confident, relaxing. It's way early. It's gonna be a while before that first Tupac Lives t-shirt gets airbrushed, before somebody gets their baby mama's name burned onto a plaque bearing the likenesses of the Holy Trinity: Mother Teresa, the BVM, and Jennifer Lopez. Don't be mad at the rocks that they got.

But, you know, fuck all that noise, dude. Because right now, on this last night, especially fucking tonight, dude, Fleet Week has better things to do with its money.

Bro, we gotta roll. Leave dat shit on the table, son. We get it the way back, aiight? Long as you ain't throwed you money at every bitch you seen. (HIGH FIVE!)

You see, right now most of the men in Manhattan who are wearing white bell bottoms are likely carrying a fat roll of singles, a rubber-banded roll of dollar bills smirkingly acquired from the too-bored-to-be-disgusted tellers at every midtown branch of Chase or Commerce or Citibank. The tellers know where those singles are headed. Walking away from the bank, the roll of ones is fingered anxiously in each man's pocket. This is everything left over from his entire leave, savings harvested via hot dog carts, bottom shelf whisky, and walking back to the Wasp instead of taking a cab, even though there's five of you and it woulda only cost about 4 bucks each. Five, tops.

But, ah, five extra dollars to add to the roll of singles means five extra individual opportunities to place those dollars where they been destined to go. And that's to UNICEF's Feed The Children Fund. Snort. No. Actually, like Boy George, those singles are headed for a very short but closely scrutinized life on the NYC stage. There they will be shoved into the gaping orifices and glittery sweat-soaked thongs of the most popular and well-paid dancers of the New York City stage. Just like Boy George. Hah! Hey, the drummer just give me a rim shot! Just like Boy George! You're. Welcome.

The "gentlemen's establishments" 'round here seem tireless in their efforts to direct testicle-owning Gothamites to their nipplistiscated nightclubs, but even with their Howard Stern promotions, their taxi ads, their billboards, and their vampiric army of creepy Night Of The Steve Buscemi Living Dead guys handing out flyers all over Times Square, nobody seems to know where the strip clubs are. I can tell you without exaggeration that over the last week I have been asked, "Where the pussy at?" about a hundred million jillion times. Wait, it was three times. Whatever. The third time you mention pussy to the average gay man, his spam filter has kicked in. You can keep talkin' all you want, but like that guy who wants to share his Nigerian lotto winnings with you, you're just lying there unnoticed. Just like Boy George! (Yeah, still funny.)

I'm just about to cross Broadway when the intersection becomes flooded in a sea of white. An ill-organized flotilla of swabbies, perhaps one hundred in number, is milling around, anxious, excited, wanting to get somewhere really fast but having no idea where they are going or how to get there. The scene reminds me of a certain comic-book themed gay activist group. Some of the sailors shout conflicting directions to the others, but they do not appear to be in charge. Again, I am reminded. One of them says, "Dude, this sucks. We're almost outta time. Let's just all go do our own thing." Reminded.

Then the light changes, the sailors surge, and somebody shouts, "Don't nobody know the fuck where the pussy at?" And I die a little inside. At least they didn't ask me. Somebody says, "Ask the hot nuts guy!" And still they don't ask me. How rude. Some dude cups his hands and shouts, "Fellas, y'all just gotta stay going on 7th Avenue down to 23rd. It's 'bout a thirty minute walk, fifteen if you double-time it." And in a Broadway choreography miracle that is the stuff of which Tonys are made, one hundred young men instantly coalesce into a united multi-legged creature, a single-minded, purpose-driven, white bell-bottomed Naval sperm in search of an egg, probably one named Autumn, or maybe Summer, who is currently working her way through law school by stripping.

I stand there smiling, thinking there can't possibly be enough ho's in da house for when all those boys arrive. I watch them disappear past Red Lobster and I turn back to 42nd Street, thinking how I hope those boys at least get a good thrill from the dancers. And how I hope that a lot of them get to shove their damn singles wherever they want. Then I realize that all the titty bars I happen to be familiar with seem to be on 11th Avenue, not 7th Avenue, and I wince at the thought that those boys may have blown the last hours of their last night in New York City swimming up the wrong Fallopian tube. I can't imagine what grim nightmare the U.S.S. Wasp may have in store for her crew. But I hope every. single. one. of them gets this pussy thing that intrigues them so. The ones that want it, anyway. Including the girls. Especially the girls.

Dance Of The Sugar Plum Lesbians

This story makes its eighth annual appearance on JMG....

Grand Central Terminal functions as the mechanical heart of midtown New York City, pumping out several thousand workers and tourists on one beat, then sucking in several thousand more on the next.

The rhythms of the terminal are fascinating.

Beat. Four thousand, inbound from New Haven.

Beat. Three thousand, outbound to Westchester.

Worlds collide on the main floor.

The tourists gawk up at the gloriously ornate ceiling and uselessly flash their digital cameras at objects hundreds of feet away.

The commuters rush up to the track displays to determine their track number, then dart across the terminal floor, dodging the milling tourists, heads down, like running backs heading for the end zone.

It's mesmerizing. It's majestic.

And sometimes, like tonight, it's magical.

I'm walking through the massive main room just as the holiday laser show begins on the ceiling. To the tune of Take The "A" Train, the laser depicts two trains arriving from different directions. The trains stop opposite each other and a reindeer leaps out of each one and crosses over to the opposite train.

The laser traces the outline of one of the zodiac constellations painted on the ceiling. The Cancer crab leaps to life and becomes the Crab Conductor, waddling down the center aisle of the car, punching the reindeers' ticket stubs with his claws.

I move over to the edge of the room, near the entrance for Track 25, so I can watch the reaction to the show. As usual, I'm more entertained by watching the audience than by watching the actual show.

At the ticket windows, standing in front of signs that say "Harlem Line" or "Hudson Line", commuters tilt their heads painfully back to view the show directly overhead. The tourists cluster in delighted circles, holding each others' elbows for balance as they nearly bend over backwards.

Some people move to the edges of the great hall, as I have, to remove themselves from the traffic flow while they watch. Among those that come to join me on the perimeter of the room is a lesbian couple. They stand quite close to me, the taller woman behind the shorter one, with her arms wrapped around her, supporting her a bit as they both lean back on the marble wall.

The shorter woman is stout with a large firm chest. Her hair is short and brushed back into what might have once been called a ducktail. She has an ornate tattoo on her left forearm and she has a leather wallet protruding from the rear pocket of her jeans, attached to her leather belt by a short silver chain. She has more than a passing resemblence to Tony Danza, her big boobs notwithstanding, so naturally (in my head) I name her Toni.

Toni's girlfriend is blond and her short ponytail dangles just above her collar. She is wearing long Christmas tree earrings which nearly brush her shoulders. Her lanky, sinewy limbs are bound in a tight running outfit, over which she is wearing a school athletic jacket. I imagine that she might be a coach at Yale or Harvard, perhaps a girls lacrosse coach, or maybe track and field.

Coach is squeezing Toni tightly and they bounce together to the music a bit. Coach looks over at me and catches me smiling. She nudges Toni, who looks over at me too, and we all grin goofily at each other for a moment.

Overhead, a new show begins. The familiar opening notes of Tchaikovsky's Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies ring out as the Empire State and the Chrysler buildings sprout arms, bow to each other, and begin waltzing across the ceiling.

I look around the room and it's as if time was frozen for just a second, every person stopped in mid-stride, eyes cast upward, mouths open in silent joy.

Toni pushes away from Coach, turns around and delivers her a bow as deep and as elegant as the one just depicted overheard.

"Madame, may I please have this dance?" she asks Coach.

Coach looks around a bit awkwardly. "You are TOO much!" And she giggles.

"Madame, I must insist!" says Toni, as she takes Coach's hands into hers.

Coach relents and she and Toni begin a beautful, slow waltz, moving in half-time to the music. As you might have guessed already, Toni leads.

As they dance, their eyes remain locked on each other. Toni is giving Coach an intense look, her lips tightly curled into a satisfied smile. Coach is grinning from ear to ear and again, she giggles.

All around Coach and Toni, the tourists, the businessmen, the students, the conductors, even the guy with a broom...they're all watching. Some are expressionless, but more are smiling, and some of them...some of them are frantically fussing with their cameras, eager to capture this magical New York Moment.

Serendipity prevails, the tune ends, and Toni dips Coach backwards with a dramatic upsweep of her free arm as a firestorm of camera flashes erupt around them. Toni pulls Coach up and close to her and they hug. There's another camera flash and the crowd begins to move along.

Then.

"Hey, look!"

The laser show is being concluded with giant sprigs of mistletoe appearing over our heads. This time it's Coach who bends down and plants a long tender kiss on Toni's non-lipsticked mouth. There's another flash of cameras from the delighted audience.

Toni takes Coach's hand and they begin to move off towards the exit.

"Oh, don't stop!" says a disappointed woman, still rummaging for her camera.

Toni looks back over her shoulder and says, "I never will."

Grand Central Terminal, the mechanical heart of New York City, beats again. But this time I hear a different rhythm. This time I hear a double beat.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBODY!

Membership

ABOVE: At the 1985 Xmas party described below: Me, Michael, and Barney. I also wrote about Barney here.

Originally posted May 2004. Reposted for World AIDS Day.

Membership

Michael didn't look good.

We were at his annual Christmas Luau party. Tons and tons of people in the house and the backyard. Standing in his kitchen, wearing a grass skirt and a ridiculous Santa hat covered in sequins, he was acting like always...all flamboyant and silly and adorable.

But he didn't look...right.

It was 1985.

My boyfriend Ken and I stayed until the end of the party to help clean up. I busied myself in the kitchen, washing glasses and cleaning ashtrays. Through the kitchen window I watched Ken and Michael in the backyard where they were stacking up the chairs and dousing the dozens of tiki torches, the trademark of Michael's party. When we were finished, Ken and I stood for a few minutes on Michael's front porch to review the party: who came, who didn't, who shouldn't have come.

Finally I yawned and stretched and nudged Ken. "C'mon babe, let's roll. Michael, lots of fun as always. Try and get some sleep, you look like you need it."

Ken shot me a scowl.

I tried to recover. "I mean, you must be exhausted from getting the party ready."

Michael laughed and lit a cigarette. "Oh, you know me. I'll bounce back. Nothing that can't be cured by cigarettes, coffee and cocaine!"

We giggled and waved and headed down the driveway. When we reached our car, I looked back at the house. Michael was struggling with the garbage cans, then broke into a hacking cough.

For the first few minutes of our ride home, Ken and I didn't say anything. Then at a traffic light, I looked over at him. "Didn't you think Michael..."

"He's FINE!" Ken cut me off.

"You didn't think he looked kinda thin? And that coughing..."

'Well, you know he smokes too much. And you'd look worn out too if YOU threw a Christmas party for 100 people.'

"Yeah, I guess."

Ken knew what I was talking about, even if we didn't actually talk about it. For two years, maybe three, we'd been following the developing story about AIDS. At first, the press was calling it 'gay cancer'. Then GRID. Gay Related Immune Disorder. Then AIDS.

We lived in Orlando. Almost all the cases were in New York or San Francisco and that made us feel safe in a strange way. Neither of us had been in either place, except as children. And we didn't have any friends from either city. Then Miami began to report cases.

Michael was from Miami.

A week after his Christmas party, on New Year's Eve out at the club, Michael uncharacteristically left early. Before midnight. He said his hip was bothering him. Our friend Jack teased him as he was leaving. "Oh, is Grandpa having some problems with his rheumatiz?"

Michael just smiled and blew us kisses from across the room and limped out.

A few weeks later Ken called me from his office. He was going to take Michael to the hospital. His hip was terribly infected, and he couldn't walk. I didn't ask him what was wrong, by now we knew. And Michael knew that we did.

Waiting for Ken to come home, I watched a TV report on AIDS. Specifically, it dealt with how funeral parlors were sometimes refusing to handle the bodies of AIDS patients. Fear of infection. Fear of loss of reputation. The narrator made a comment about the families and friends of those killed by AIDS. He called them "this new and modern group" of grievers. When Ken got home, I told him about the story with indignation.

Over the next few months, Michael was in the hospital quite a bit. Ken got into the habit of visiting him on his way home from work, something I could rarely do since I worked nights. When I did see Michael, he looked progressively worse. Skinnier, more pale, his skin patchy and scaley.

But he always had that bitchy sense of humor and that chicken cackle. I'd hear that laugh from down the hallway as I approached his room, which always seemed to be full of friends.

Florida started its state lottery that summer. On the first night of the big drawing, I tried to stay awake for the results but I fell asleep with the tickets in my hands. I was awakened by Ken sitting on the bed.

"Hey." I rolled over and looked at the clock. Three in the morning?

Ken still had his tie on. My throat clenched. I don't know why, but I pushed the lottery tickets over towards him.

"So, um...are we millionaires?"

Ken didn't answer me.

"Where have you been? At the hospital? How's Michael?"

Ken leaned over and started untying his shoes. He pulled them off and finally turned to face me. He looked so very tired. He laid down next to me and hugged me, then spoke softly into my ear.

"We've just joined that 'new and modern' group."

Ricky Loved Madonna

As longtime readers know, there are a handful of short stories from my archives that I repost annually. Today is Madonna's 53nd birthday and this story makes its sixth appearance in memory of a departed friend.

Ricky Loved Madonna

Today is August 16th. It's Madonna's 48th birthday. That's not something of which I'd ordinarily make note.........

Twenty years ago today, August 16th 1986, I was a few months into a new job with AMC Theatres, a job that I would hold for seven years after having spent a few years after college drifting around bartending, waitering, and DJ-ing. After burning through three terrible DJ gigs in about a year, I took the management position with AMC almost in desperation, happy to finally have a regular paycheck. I bought my first brand new car. I had several dozen underlings. I had a business card. I felt like a grown-up, almost.

Twenty years ago today, it was a Saturday. As the assistant manager, I had to be at the theatre at 10am, even though I had closed the midnight shows the night before, not getting home until almost 4am. I stumbled through the still-unfamiliar opening procedures. My mind was on Ricky. I took the cash drawers out to the concession stand and the box office and turned on the air conditioners and lights in all the auditoriums. The first movie, a Disney cartoon, started at 11:30am and we had hundreds of people in front of the box office before I even rolled up the mall gates.

Twenty years ago today, the night before was a Friday. It was the opening night of the remake of The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum. My six-plex was jamming. The Fly sold out at every show, driving the overflow audiences into Top Gun and Aliens, which were still doing decent business on their own. All six auditoriums sold out by 8pm and I rushed to get that show's money counted before the first of the auditoriums began to let out and we had to start the process all over again. I pushed into the counting room inside the manager's office and dumped several thousand in $20's onto the countertop. The intercom buzzed.

"Mr. J., there's a man here to see you."

In the lobby was my friend Todd. "Joe, I'm on my way to see Ricky. Can you come? He's worse."

I looked out into the mall where hundreds of teenagers milled around in front of closed storefronts. The Interstate Mall was on its last legs. All that was left was the theatre, a pinball arcade, an adult novelty shop, and the driver's license bureau, which was closed at that hour. The teenagers roamed the broad unswept avenue of the mall in swirling, shrieking packs, anxious for the late show to begin.

I shook my head. "Todd, I'm the only one here. I have the late show and then the midnights. The last movie doesn't let out until almost 3am. I have to lock up." Todd nodded and made a movement like he was going to hug me, then realized that a dozen of my employees were watching. Awkwardly, he stuck out his hand, as if that's what he'd intended all along. I shook it and he left. I had never shaken Todd's hand before.

Twenty years ago today, one week earlier, Ricky went into the hospital. He'd had a seizure on the bathroom floor of his sister's condo. Todd and I went to the hospital the next day and found him lying unconscious in his bed, unattended, in a pool of feces. Todd staggered into the hallway and tried to control his retching while I looked for a nurse. At the nurses' station, the stout Jamaican woman behind the counter nodded curtly but didn't get out of her chair when I asked that Ricky receive some attention. I went back to find Todd sitting out in the lounge, smoking.

"Joe, I can't be here. I'm freaking out. Do you know we walked right in there without a mask on?"

"I think the mask is more for him than us....so if..."

"I have to go."

We stopped at the Burger King a few blocks away and washed our hands. Even though we hadn't touched Ricky or anything but the door of his hospital room, we scrubbed the front and backs of our hands like we'd seen surgeons do on television.

Twenty years ago today, two weeks earlier, Todd and I had dropped in at Ricky's sister's condo. Ricky had been forced to move in with her. He'd lost his job at the giant hotel near Disney where he'd been training to be a pastry chef. For a long time he'd managed to keep his illness a secret, wearing long shirts even in the hot kitchen so that nobody saw the lesions that were growing inexorably from his wrists to his elbows. A lesion appeared on the back of his hand and that one he covered with make-up, but when a lesion appeared right on the tip of his nose, the head chef and head of human resources had called him in on his day off to fire him. Surely he understood, they told him, that they couldn't have him handling food.

When Ricky's sister opened the door of her condo, she made a face. "He's not feeling well." She'd already made it clear to Todd on his previous visit that she did not like her brother's "friends". Todd said quickly, "Oh, well, we just wanted to drop off a present for him." I had Madonna's latest release, True Blue, on CD in a sparkly bag. We knew that he'd gotten the vinyl album earlier in the summer, but since he was such a big fan we knew he'd like to have the CD version too.

His sister led us into the bedroom where we found Ricky watching television. He was cranky and inattentive to us, but momentarily brightened when we gave him the CD. He examined the cover. "It's the same as the album, just smaller." He didn't have a player, hardly anyone did yet, so he laid the longbox reverently on his nightstand, propping it against the lamp. His sister hovered in the doorway smoking, anxious for our departure, and we soon obliged her.

Twenty years ago today, three months earlier, I met Ricky for the first time at a party thrown by Todd. I'd heard from Todd that Ricky was "sick", but he seemed fine to me. We stood outside on the patio and watched guys jumping into the pool.

Ricky said, "So what do you do, Joe?"

I said, "Well, I just started working for AMC Theatres."

Ricky screamed a little bit. "Which ONE?"

I stepped back. "Interstate Six, why?"

"Because I am in there ALL the time. I saw At Close Range about five times just to hear Madonna's song in it!"

"She wasn't in the movie, was she?"

"No, but I'm just a freak for her." He paused, then added dramatically, "We have the same birthday!"

"Oh....really." I began to look around for Todd.

Ricky began to get very animated and his words tumbled out. "Yes!. Same day, same year. I was born exactly at midnight and my mother always said I could have August 15th or August 16th for my birthday. It was my choice and for the longest time I had it on August 15th cuz that's Julia Child's birthday and she's a chef and I'm a chef and she was like, my idol when I was little. Such a fag, right? Anyway, when Madonna came out and I found out her birthday, I was all...that's IT. I'm August 16th from now on!"

Ricky continued professing his undying love for Madonna until I was finally able to make a graceful escape. Later, Todd told me that Ricky had dressed as Madonna for the previous Halloween and belonged to her mail-order fan club and we laughed a little bit at his adorably nutty fandom.

Twenty years ago today, August 16th 1986, was a Saturday. The theatre had brisk business for the morning show, selling out the Disney movie. After all the houses were rolling, I pulled the money from the box office and sat alone in the office to count it. I turned on the radio so I could hear Casey Kasem counting down the Top 40.

Todd called. "Well, the hospital just told me Ricky died around midnight last night."

"Oh, no. Did you get in to see him...before.....?"

"No, his sister and mother were there, so I just left without going in."

"Right." That's how it usually went back then.

Todd hung up and I sat there finishing up my money counting. I didn't know how to feel. I really couldn't call Ricky a friend. I had to count and recount the money several times. I kept losing my place. Then I heard Casey Kasem say, "Hitting number one today is Madonna's Papa Don't Preach."

I called Todd back. "So, did they give you a time of death for Ricky?"

"Yeah, midnight."

"Right, but is that today or yesterday?"

"What?"

"Well, today is his birthday and it's Madonna's birthday and I just heard that she's number one today...and.....it would be, you know, sorta nice if it was today."

"What the fuck is nice about dying on your BIRTHDAY?"

We never talked about it again. I never did find out what day was listed for Ricky's death. As the years went on and Madonna's fame increased, the press began to note her birthday. And ever since that started, I think of Ricky on August 16th. I never knew Ricky's last name. He wasn't a close friend. But he has stuck with me over these two decades.

I know that writing these stories about dead people is rather maudlin. Melodramatic. In a way, a story about a stranger's death is always going to feel melodramatic, I suppose. I've written stories like this a half dozen times over the two years of this blog's existence, and I've got many more, more sad stories still untold. I think I get feeling scared that if I don't get the story out there, I'll forget it. Forget how it happened. Forget the person.

Twenty years ago today, Ricky, aged 28, died on his birthday. I will always hope that it was his August 16th birthday. Ricky loved Madonna.

Watching The Defectives

Gentle readers, I'm rerunning my annual Pride rant for the seventh year. I wrote this post in 2005 a couple of days after attending Pride here in NYC. In the following years I've reposted it in advance of the day in the hope of encouraging you to attend. My apologies to those that have read it before. Have a wonderful Pride. Love each other.

Watching The Defectives

Last Sunday at 12:30pm, I was in position on Christopher Street with Terrence, his glamor boys, and touring UK bloggers Dave and Darren. The Pride parade was due to round the corner any minute, but I tore off in search of a bodega, crossing my fingers that my desperate need for a soda wouldn't cause me to miss Dykes On Bikes. Half a block away, I found a little place and ducked in, weaving through the customers clogging the aisles on rushed missions like mine. I was third in line, two bottles of Sprite under my arm, when the man in front of me spotted a friend entering the store.

"David! Sweetie! Where are you watching from? Come hang out with us on Allen's balcony!"

David, a bookish looking middle-aged man, destroyed the festive mood in the little store in an instant. "Absolutely not. Those defectives and freaks?" he spat, indicating the colorful crowd outside the store, "They have nothing to do with MY life, thank you very much. This parade has as much dignity as a carnival freak show. It's no wonder the whole country hates us."

Luckily for David, the Asshole Killer mind ray I've been working on is not yet operational. I settled for pushing him a little, just a tiny bit, just to get by him in that narrow aisle, of course. I returned to my sweaty little group and tried to put what I'd heard out of my mind for the remainder of the day, because I knew that by the next morning, the thousands of Davids of the world, the ones who have media access anyway, would all issue their now familiar day-after-Pride rant. The one where they decry the drag queens on all those newspaper front pages. The one where they beat their chests and lament, "Why don't the papers ever show the NORMAL gay people? Where are the bankers and lawyers? Why must all the coverage be drag queens and leather freaks in assless chaps?"

And every year, the logical answer is that bankers and lawyers are boring to look at and that pictures of marching Gap employees don't sell newspapers. There's no sinister media agenda intent on making gay people look ridiculous, no fag-hating cabal behind the annual front page explosion of sequins and feathers. It's just good copy. Drag queens are interesting. Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones.

Yet right on cue, the day after Pride, the Davids of the blogosphere dished out their heavy-handed dissections of parades around the country. Only this year, there was a palpably nastier tone to an already traditionally nasty annual debate. Blame the election, blame the recent avalanche of anti-gay legislation, but this year, the usual assimilationist arguments went beyond the hypothetical speculations that maybe our Pride parades were too outlandish, that maybe we weren't doing the movement any favors by showing the country a face that happened to be wearing 6-inch long false eyelashes. This year there was some actual discussion about HOW we were going to "fix" Pride parades. Of how we might go about "discouraging" certain "elements" from taking part in the parades.

This is the part of the story where I have my annual post-Pride apoplectic attack. This is the part of the story where the swelling volume of Nazi analogies overwhelm my ability to speak and all I can do is twitch and bark out little nonsensical bits. This is where I always forget the name given to the Jews who went to work for the Nazis, helping load the trains. "Because that's what you are asking us to do, you assholes!" Then I always ask, "Who are we going to sacrifice to 'save' ourselves? Which child will it be, Sophie?" And this is the part of the story where my friends accuse me of being a hyperbole-laden drama queen, wasting spiritual energy on a non-crisis, and of co-opting the Holocaust as well. More on that later.

These people that want to "fix" Pride don't understand the role that Pride parades have come to play. Initially, the gay parade was about visibility. It was about safety in numbers, and more importantly, "normalcy" in numbers. It was about the idea that if only straight America could see us, could just SEE US, that they'd love us. And accept us. That if we'd mass and march by the righteous millions, the sheer unstoppable force of our collective image would topple bigotry. Would right wrongs. Would stop hate.

Of course, that didn't happen then and it doesn't happen now.

What DOES happen, is that Pride parades, at least in the big cities, have become nothing more significant to straight America than an annual traffic nightmare. As a tool of the gay movement, the Pride parade is now merely a walking photo op for politicians and perhaps not much more. A couple of years ago, the ultimate arbiter of America's cultural zeitgeist, The Simpsons, made note of this:

(The gay pride parade is going past the Simpson house.)

Chanting marchers: "We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!"

Lisa Simpson: "You're here every year. We ARE used to it."

What does all of this mean to the Davids of the world, the gay assimilationists that want to, wish they could, somebody do something, there's gotta be a way we can, Dignify This Parade? The ones begging: "Can't we get our people to at least DRESS respectfully for one lousy day? Is that too much to ask of our people? "

Yes, yes it is.

Because you are kidding yourself if you think Pride parades, in any form, will EVER change the minds of homophobes. The straight people who show up to see Pride parades are already largely convinced. We're parading to the choir, Jesse. Those straight people love our freaks, bless them.

Oh, you could test run a "defective" free parade. You could form urban anti-drag squads and go around to all the gayborhoods on the morning of the parade and give all the drag queens 50% off coupons for Loehmann's, offer good during the parade only. And they'd GO, of course, cuz hey, those girls love a bargain. But the resultant bland, humorless, "normal" gay parade wouldn't change the course of the gay movement one bit. The part of straight America that is repulsed by drag queens is quite possibly even more terrified by the so-called "normal" gays, because "those clever calculating creatures look JUST LIKE US, and can infiltrate and get access to our precious children. And that's been their disgusting plan all along, of course."

So where does that leave us? Are we post-Pride? Is the parade just a colossally long waste of a miserably hot summer day? Is the Pride parade just an event that does a better job of moving chicken-on-a-stick than it does of moving hearts? I'd say that, yes, as an effective tool of the gay movement, Pride's usefulness has largely waned in many U.S. cities. So do we even need to keep having these parades, since they no longer seem to have much of an impact on the state of the movement? No, we don't.

But...YES, WE DO.

Because even if Pride doesn't change many minds in the outside world, it's our PARTY, darlings. It's our Christmas, our New Year's, our Carnival. It's the one day of the year that all the crazy contingents of the gay world actually come face to face on the street and blow each other air kisses. And wish each other "Happy Pride!" Saying "Happy Pride!" is really just a shorter, easier way of saying "Congratulations on not being driven completely batshit insane! Way to go for not taking a rifle into a tower and taking out half the town! Well done, being YOURSELF!"

I'm not worried what the outside world thinks about the drag queens, the topless bulldaggers, or the nearly naked leatherfolk. It's OUR party, bitches. If you think that straight America would finally pull its homokinder to its star-spangled bosom once we put down that glitter gun, then you are seriously deluding yourself. Next year, if one of the Christian camera crews that show up to film our "debauched" celebrations happen to train their cameras on you, stop dancing. And start PRANCING.

All you suburban, lawn mowing, corpo-droid homos out there, hiding behind your picket fences, the ones wringing your hands and worrying that Pride ruins YOUR personal rep, listen up. Do you think that straight Americans worry that Mardi Gras damages international perception of American culture? America, land of the free, home of "Show Us Your Tits!"? They don't and neither should we. Our Pride celebrations are just our own unique version of Mardi Gras, only instead of throwing beads, we throw shade. No one has to ask US to show our tits. We've already got 'em out there, baby. And some of them are real.

A co-worker of mine heard me discussing my Pride plans last weekend and said, "I really don't understand what it is you are proud about. I mean, you all say that you are born that way, so it's not like you accomplished anything." She wasn't being mean, just genuinely curious, and I think that a lot of gay people probably feel the same way. On this subject, I can only speak for myself.

I'm proud because I'm a middle-aged gay man who has more dead friends than living ones and yet I'm not completely insane. I've lived through a personal Holocaust (here we go again) in which my friends and lovers have been mowed down as thoroughly and randomly as the S.S guards moved down the line of Jews. You, dead. You, to the factory. And you, you, you, and you, dead. I am inexplicably alive and I am proud that I keep the memories of my friends alive. I am proud of my people, the ACT-UPers, the Quilt makers, the Larry Kramers, the Harvey Fiersteins. I'm proud that I'm not constantly curled up into a ball on my bed, clutching photo albums and sobbing. And that happens sometimes, believe it.

And outside of my personal experiences, I am proud of my tribe as a group. Sometimes I think that gay people are more creative, more empathic, more intuitive, more generous, and more selfless than anybody else on the planet. Sometimes I think that if an alien culture were surveying our planet from light years away, they might classify gay people as an entirely separate species of humans. It's easy to spot us because of our better haircuts.

But sometimes I think we are the worst people in the entire world when it comes to standing up for each other. The gay people who'd like to soothe their personal image problems by selectively culling some of our children from Pride events? They disgust me. They appall me. They embarrass me. To them I say: The very road that YOU now have the privilege of swaggering upon was paved by those very queens and leather freaks that you complain about as you practice your "masculine" and give us butch face. If you want to live in the house that THEY BUILT, you better act like you fucking know it. United we stand, you snide bitches. America's kulturkampf ain't gonna be solved by making flamboyant people go away.

I'll end this by making one final Jewish reference. Possibly you've heard the Jewish in-joke that sums up the meaning of all Jewish holidays? "They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat." My Pride version?

They wish we were invisible.

We're not.

Let's dance.

Dance Of The Sugar Plum Lesbians

This story makes its seventh annual appearance on JMG....

Grand Central Terminal functions as the mechanical heart of midtown New York City, pumping out several thousand workers and tourists on one beat, then sucking in several thousand more on the next.

The rhythms of the terminal are fascinating.

Beat. Four thousand, inbound from New Haven.

Beat. Three thousand, outbound to Westchester.

Worlds collide on the main floor.

The tourists gawk up at the gloriously ornate ceiling and uselessly flash their digital cameras at objects hundreds of feet away.

The commuters rush up to the track displays to determine their track number, then dart across the terminal floor, dodging the milling tourists, heads down, like running backs heading for the end zone.

It's mesmerizing. It's majestic.

And sometimes, like tonight, it's magical.

I'm walking through the massive main room just as the holiday laser show begins on the ceiling. To the tune of Take The "A" Train, the laser depicts two trains arriving from different directions. The trains stop opposite each other and a reindeer leaps out of each one and crosses over to the opposite train.

The laser traces the outline of one of the zodiac constellations painted on the ceiling. The Cancer crab leaps to life and becomes the Crab Conductor, waddling down the center aisle of the car, punching the reindeers' ticket stubs with his claws.

I move over to the edge of the room, near the entrance for Track 25, so I can watch the reaction to the show. As usual, I'm more entertained by watching the audience than by watching the actual show.

At the ticket windows, standing in front of signs that say "Harlem Line" or "Hudson Line", commuters tilt their heads painfully back to view the show directly overhead. The tourists cluster in delighted circles, holding each others' elbows for balance as they nearly bend over backwards.

Some people move to the edges of the great hall, as I have, to remove themselves from the traffic flow while they watch. Among those that come to join me on the perimeter of the room is a lesbian couple. They stand quite close to me, the taller woman behind the shorter one, with her arms wrapped around her, supporting her a bit as they both lean back on the marble wall.

The shorter woman is stout with a large firm chest. Her hair is short and brushed back into what might have once been called a ducktail. She has an ornate tattoo on her left forearm and she has a leather wallet protruding from the rear pocket of her jeans, attached to her leather belt by a short silver chain. She has more than a passing resemblence to Tony Danza, her big boobs notwithstanding, so naturally (in my head) I name her Toni.

Toni's girlfriend is blond and her short ponytail dangles just above her collar. She is wearing long Christmas tree earrings which nearly brush her shoulders. Her lanky, sinewy limbs are bound in a tight running outfit, over which she is wearing a school athletic jacket. I imagine that she might be a coach at Yale or Harvard, perhaps a girls lacrosse coach, or maybe track and field.

Coach is squeezing Toni tightly and they bounce together to the music a bit. Coach looks over at me and catches me smiling. She nudges Toni, who looks over at me too, and we all grin goofily at each other for a moment.

Overhead, a new show begins. The familiar opening notes of Tchaikovsky's Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies ring out as the Empire State and the Chrysler buildings sprout arms, bow to each other, and begin waltzing across the ceiling.

I look around the room and it's as if time was frozen for just a second, every person stopped in mid-stride, eyes cast upward, mouths open in silent joy.

Toni pushes away from Coach, turns around and delivers her a bow as deep and as elegant as the one just depicted overheard.

"Madame, may I please have this dance?" she asks Coach.

Coach looks around a bit awkwardly. "You are TOO much!" And she giggles.

"Madame, I must insist!" says Toni, as she takes Coach's hands into hers.

Coach relents and she and Toni begin a beautful, slow waltz, moving in half-time to the music. As you might have guessed already, Toni leads.

As they dance, their eyes remain locked on each other. Toni is giving Coach an intense look, her lips tightly curled into a satisfied smile. Coach is grinning from ear to ear and again, she giggles.

All around Coach and Toni, the tourists, the businessmen, the students, the conductors, even the guy with a broom...they're all watching. Some are expressionless, but more are smiling, and some of them...some of them are frantically fussing with their cameras, eager to capture this magical New York Moment.

Serendipity prevails, the tune ends, and Toni dips Coach backwards with a dramatic upsweep of her free arm as a firestorm of camera flashes erupt around them. Toni pulls Coach up and close to her and they hug. There's another camera flash and the crowd begins to move along.

Then.

"Hey, look!"

The laser show is being concluded with giant sprigs of mistletoe appearing over our heads. This time it's Coach who bends down and plants a long tender kiss on Toni's non-lipsticked mouth. There's another flash of cameras from the delighted audience.

Toni takes Coach's hand and they begin to move off towards the exit.

"Oh, don't stop!" says a disappointed woman, still rummaging for her camera.

Toni looks back over her shoulder and says, "I never will."

Grand Central Terminal, the mechanical heart of New York City, beats again. But this time I hear a different rhythm. This time I hear a double beat.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBODY!

How We Got The News

Originally posted on December 8th, 2005.

"Oh, good grief! Why do you insist on having a Slurpee after going out drinking? It's gross."

"I'll be right back," my roommate said and slammed the door of my car.

I kept the engine running and fiddled with the radio, trying to find the new Donna Summer single we'd heard just heard at the Parliament House. I looked through the windows of the 7-Eleven to see my roommate looking around the store in puzzlement. He looked out at me and waved at me to come inside. I turned off the car and walked in.

"What's the problem?"

My roommate indicated the unmanned counter. "Look, there's no clerk! Nobody is here. Do you think they've been robbed?"

My pulse quickened. A few weeks earlier, there'd been a slaying of an Orlando convenience store clerk. The clerk's body had been found by the next customers to arrive in the store. That thought in mind, I peered into the back room of the store.

"Hello? Anybody here?"

We heard a small sound, like a kitten mewing. But the sound wasn't coming from the back room, it was coming from behind the front register. Fearfully, we leaned across the wide laminated counter, pushing aside the hot dog condiments and Slim Jim display. The clerk, a young woman, was lying there on the floor, sobbing, her mouth open but only an occasional faint cry escaping.

"Are you OK? Do you need help? Do you want us to call the police?"

The woman pulled herself to a sitting position, shaking her head. I noticed that she was holding a small transistor radio. She ran her hand down her face, as if trying to wake herself up from a bad dream, and said, "He's dead! He's dead! I can't fucking believe it!"

"Who's dead? Not the president!" my roommate gasped.

"No. It's Lennon. John Lennon. They shot him and he's dead," she wailed, falling back over on her side.

We left her there on the floor and drove home in silence. Before I fell asleep that night, I heard my roommate playing Double Fantasy in his room and I think I heard him crying too.

That was 25 years ago, today.