Dance me to the end of night

                        

            The line to get into the club snakes around the block, but Joey struts past everyone. “Don’t spaz out,” he instructs us under his breath. “Just act cool.” Sean and I follow, acting as cool as we know how, which is not very. 

            I’m not like Joey. Even if I wear the same clothes as he does, the skintight jeans and the cut- up, oversized black sweatshirt meant to sort of hang off my shoulder, like the actors in Flashdance.  A tragic Super Cuts feathered mullet, and the wispy beginnings of a mustache that shows very little promise, complete my look. I’m not cool. 

Joey sails ahead, ignoring the irritated looks of the others waiting. His sleek blond leanness cuts through the crowd, straight toward the jittery door guy.

A mohawked individual wearing black lipstick confronts us. “You think you’re just going to burn by me? I don’t think so.” He stands about 7 feet, all pure anger in dark ragged clothes and shit kicking boots.

Behind me, Sean gasps. “Holy fuck.” 

The dude just stands there, scowling, waiting. 

Joey doesn’t stop. He deftly sidesteps the angry giant without slowing. “Eat shit, skinhead,” he says, his eyebrow arched with a defiant glare. The guy backs off, grumbling but subdued. We pass him without another look. 

We make it to the door.  “Hey Reggie,” Joey coos. 

The bouncer, a wall of flesh, smiles, showing off two gold front teeth. “Hey, Baby, how you been?” He barely glances at our borrowed fake IDs.  

The door opens, with a blast of noise and heat. We are in.  A heady mix greets us, the warmth of close bodies, the scent of a roomful of men, the mingled tang of sweat and sweet cologne, and the funk of cigarette smoke that lurks like a haze above the dancers. Michael Jackson and a troupe of zombies moonwalk across three jumbo screens. Speakers the size of refrigerators thump, the words scream out :“It’s close to midnight, and something evil’s lurking in the dark,” which sets off a ripple of laughter. Joey walks ahead with the ease of coming home. People run up to him with a flurry of kisses. Everybody knows him. Sean and I tiptoe like thieves, inching our way through the sea of half naked maleness. Overhead, a glittering mirrored ball spins incessantly, hypnotically. 

 “Nervous?” Sean whispers over the crashing music. His eyes bug out, like mine, as we take it all in. 

“Scared shitless.” The beat of the music surges through me like a pulse. My teeth vibrate. When a handsome man with a Miami Vice scruff face looks over at me, a fire of pinprick tingles my skin.         

“Come on ladies, let’s get moving!” Joey shouts over his shoulder.

Sean grabs my hand, gives it a squeeze. 

We both catch our breath. 

“You OK?” I ask.

He doesn’t need to answer. I can feel him trembling next to me. 

At the very back of the vast room, a smaller, less crowded bar floats like an oasis in the dark. A collection of pale faces with somber, deadened eyes watch us as we approach. “These are hard core punks, New Wave Junkies,” Joey warns us, “don’t mess with anyone.”  

 Sean, a shy, skinny kid from a Detroit suburb, has obviously never messed with anyone. He once described his fashion style of sweater vests, funky glasses, and Keds, as nerd chic. In an effort to create an edgier look, he grows his dreads out. I don’t think he looks any tougher. But then, who am I to talk.

The surly bartender’s arms are crisscrossed with scars, covered in tattoos of flaming skulls and barbed wire. He sneers at us. A safety pin in his lip glints in the light. He plunks down three Rolling Rocks and takes my crumpled five. The beer is piss warm but it’s cheap, and we have a little more than 15 bucks between us. 

 “In the event someone offers to buy you a drink,” Joey says, “that’s when you maybe wanna get something fancier. Absolut or whatever. But beer is good too, because you can carry it through the crowd easier, and it looks kinda hot when you stand there holding the bottle, but you got to do it a little more butch and not so nellie.” He whacks my arm, which must be in the nellie position. Joey shows us how to bring the slender green glass bottles to our lips in a way intended to be alluring.

“I doubt anyone will be buying me a drink,” Sean says, as though the happening would be very unsettling.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Poindexter,” Joey takes a long swig. “You might not project much self-confidence, but you have something the daddies can’t get enough of. You’re a twink.”

“What’s a twink?”

Joey looks at Sean like he’s just arrived from the woods. “Jeez, you kids are babies. A twink. To be a twinkie, it means you are a pretty young thing.  P.Y.T. , baby. Youth is highly desirable.”

“Is it?”

“Trust me,” he assures us, with all the wisdom of 21. 

People who know Joey come up to say hello, a blur of handsome faces and forgettable names, and suddenly we have shots of darkly herbal and fragrant Jagermeister. Glasses are raised. Shots are downed. Again. And again. It tastes like cough syrup made out of dirty roots.

“I’m getting drunk,” Sean slurs.

“That’s pretty much the point, kid,” Joey slaps his back. “Bottom’s up,” he says with a wink.

With that, he directs us to follow him into the men’s room, a dank damp space with the usual stink, and stalls, and urinals. Three leather dudes huddle together in the back corner, doing something furtive. I can’t help but steal a quick look, despite another whack on my arm from Joey. “Don’t be such a rube,” he says.

Then, he tells us to hold out our hands. A small white pill sits in our palms. 

“What’s this?” Sean asks, a rising note of anxiety cracks his voice. 

“Rule Number One. When someone gives you drugs, you never ask what it is. It shows very poor manners.”

Sean looks over at me, but I already eagerly gulped mine down with the last of my beer. I would do whatever Joey tells me to do at this point, increasingly aware that I’m half in love with him, have been ever since we met three weeks ago at the LGB campus quad party, when he’d for some random reason invited me over to smoke a joint with his upperclassmen buddies. “Come here, kid,” was all he said. And I did. I’ve been tagging along behind him ever since.

“Adventure awaits!” Joey says.

Sean reluctantly swallows his, with a last glance that says he will be holding me personally responsible if this does not go well. At the cracked mirror Joey helps me put on eyeliner. “Stay still,” he says, “Eyes up.” The physical closeness of him, his hand on my cheek as he sweeps the pencil on my lower lids, it’s enough to get my blood pounding in my fevered head. Whether or not he notices, he doesn’t let on. “There. Look.” 

That’s not me in the distorted glass—I am Boy George, Prince, David Bowie. I am Billy Idol. Sean’s face floats behind me, over my shoulder, with a disapproving grimace. 

“Hey little sister, what have you done?” I sing, laughing. All those Jager shots have come home to roost.

Joey joins me: “Hey little sister, who’s the only one?” And when we both laugh together, my heart bursts in my chest.

We carry the song with us as we wind our way up the crowded stairs, hollering like dangerous lunatics over the heads of people streaming up and down; “There is nothing fair in this world, there’s nothing safe in this wooooooooorld, and there’s nothing sure in this world, and there’s nothing pure in this woooooorld…” And when I convulse with giggles, Joey gives me a playful nudge. “Someone’s pill just kicked in,” he says.

When we land at last on the main dancefloor, a sudden explosion of amphetamine brightness zaps through my synapses. Everything comes together: the blasting dying beats of disco, the spinning lights, the animal heat of the crowd, and we are swallowed up in it all, swaddled, held lovingly afloat, amazed by rainbow colors. A roar rises up from the floor when that new song hits, it fills us, we throw up our hands in ecstasy, we twirl wildly, screaming “You must be my lucky star!” Someone puts a bottle of poppers under my nose. The acrid whiff burns my nostrils. My head swells like a balloon. My ears ring. A warm rush washes over me, wave upon wave. Joey pulls his soaking shirt over his head, white torso gleams, so close to me, air rippling between us. Sweat streams down his face, black tears. Sean, eyes closed, sways, an angelic smile plays on his lips. Maybe we dance for hours, or days, one song bleeds into the next, the thudding bassline rhythm never ceases, never ends its hammering heartbeat.

Eventually we come up, sputtering for breath. We climb another set of stairs, to the roof deck bar, to the relief of the cool night air. We drink it in huge gulps. The sky is moonlit, filled with stars, filled with possibilities. Joey and the bartender greet each other with familiar kisses on cheeks. Lolly’s candy apple red hair is fierce. I tell her I love her outfit— the leather bustier, the shorts that look like cellophane, her platform boots, and the layers of bracelets stacked up her arms. She says she’s experimenting some new drink, and would we want to try it. We do.  

“This lady is an alchemist,” Joey says. “Gentleman, you are about to experience something fine.”

Her bangles jangle musically as she shakes up the 14 different kinds of booze that go into the mix. It is gasoline, and nectar. It goes through me like fire. 

“Suck it down, kids. It’s last call.”

The club empties out at two. The sidewalk crowds with whooping, drunken jackals. We are carried by the flow of people, down Boylston toward the Victory Gardens, and The Fens. Sean and I have been warned about The Fens, the infamous cruising place, the park where men have sex with each other. Our R.A. told us to stay away from the whole area known for its crime and “perverts.” The park looks like any other park, but no. Tonight, it breathes with life. Something hums alive in the trees that ring the brackish marsh, the flowers asleep in tidy beds, they thrum and vibrate with electric joy. The wind whispers softly, like a lover. The leaves titter in response. We barge along, invading the drowsy quiet, singing and laughing loudly. 

“Come along, children,” Joey skips, heading for the unlit paths were naughty boys play hide and seek, and other, more dangerous games. Bright eyes call out from the rustling reeds, watching, beckoning. Joey disappears into the darkness, underneath the swaying fronds of a willow. 

Sean and I, not naughty at all, take the role of sentinels.  We sit at a picnic table under a fragrant rose trellis. Heavy late blooms sprawl lazily overhead, undulating murmuring, perfuming the air. A giggle of gay boys goes by. One winks at me. And again, my skin tingles. Insects in tall grass sing like summer will never end, despite the late September chill creeping in with the damp of the sighing swamp. A moan sounds softly from somewhere. Another. Leaves fall down all around us like rain. 

“I guess I’m as chickenshit as you all think I am,” says Sean, his voice dreamy and far away. 

“How do you mean?”

“This anonymous sex thing. It scares me. It’s not for me anyway.”

The whole thing about sex, any kind of sex, scares me too. Aside from high school fumbling in someone’s paneled basement rec room, I know nothing. I just nod. 

 “I’d rather have one guy, someone special,” he says. 

“Guess I’m chickenshit too, since I’m here with you.”

Joey loves telling us of his exploits, about all the guys he blew, all the guys who blew him. I usually laugh, even if I’m secretly freaked out. Whether he exaggerates, or not, like Sean thinks he does, I don’t know. I envy his abandon, his revelry, the freedom to say fuck you to everything. I am no rebel. I had barely come out. An earring in my left ear is as wild as I get. 

            AIDS is everywhere. That shit scares me big time. 

Every week, we read in the Bay Windows and the other gay rags, how many guys had died in San Francisco, in New York, in Los Angeles. In Boston. Across the country 7,000 men. Dead. 

Something evil’s lurking in the dark, even as a riff of laughter rises up from the reeds.  

But we won’t think about that. Not tonight. Not when the breeze gusts, lush with the scent of mellowing leaves. Not when heavy roses droop in a shower of pink petals. Not when the inky sky is filled with such amazing stars.

Sean and I share cigarettes and talk about the things you talk about when you’re high, and nineteen, and life is just about to start. We laugh about nothing, huddled together shoulder to shoulder. He looks at me with those brown earnest eyes. Once, maybe twice, we kiss, while just outside the park, sirens and city life pulse all around us. For me, the kisses are practice, and I am eager to learn. Who better to play with, than my harmless, sweet friend? Something in his kiss might have told me that he wasn’t playing. If I hadn’t been such a child, I might have understood.  

Night wears on, until the cold gray light of dawn brings to an end that endless night. Joey emerges, smirking like an errant little boy with muddy knees. “Give me a smoke,” he says, “I’m dying.” I am only too glad to hand him a Camel, and light it for him. To be near him again, to do for him, even this one small gesture of my devotion. His face in the glow of the matchlight, I’d never seen anything so beautiful. 

We drag ourselves home in dirty, wet hightops, each of us silent, smoking, listening to birds rouse in the trees. 

“I wish that the sun never came up, would never come up, that we could stay in the garden, forever,” says Joey. 

“Forever?” Sean flicks a cigarette butt into a sewer grate.

“Stay always like we are right at this moment,” I say.

Sean laughs.

“I love you guys,” I say, because I mean it, because I’m overjoyed, overfilled with love. 

              We are stoned and happy, yearning for the little death of sleep. Why couldn’t it be like this, forever? 

None of us could have known then, as we stumbled along, holding each other up, that we would never again be so young, or so free.