AIDS 1-Senior Year. Part One. Two lives continue.

If you have not yet read, please go back to AIDS 1-Being a Junior and read prior to this entry.

Since I had moved to Morristown, New Jersey I was living two lives, in two ways. There was Robert the suburban high school student with a girlfriend down the shore and simultaneously Robert the closeted gay man and in many ways a recent arrival to New York City. Most people around my neighborhood at that time lived and worked in New Jersey and went into the city at best a few times a year for a play, for a concert or game. They might once or twice go in the course of a decade to a museum. I was there almost every weekend and any other time I could find a chance. My Father was initially commuting into the city everyday. I had to use bridges and tunnels, I was a not a bridge and tunnel boy.

I was sneaking off into Manhattan on a fairly frequent basis and going to happy hours at Uncle Charlie's and popping into Julius in Greenwich Village; sometimes, well, often, that leading to my quick affairs. I had a lot of unprotected sex with much older men and given the time period it is amazing I am alive quite honestly.  I lied to all of them and said I was a grad student at Penn; at least I knew the cross streets of most of the campus. My Mother went to Penn for her undergrad and MA. My Father has some courses from Wharton. I had a jacket from Penn Crew team once years later. Nobody in my family paid bribes for it, a friend gave it to me when someone left it at his place. I was an underaged fraud. One for whom any of those gentlemen, except for a couple months of my senior year, could have been arrested. But, then again, I had been sexually exploited since I was 13 so it was the beginning of payback of sorts, a turning of the tables? Perhaps I was just a very lost and confused young man.

Clubbing was big in the 80's in New York City. There were clubs like Limelight, created in a former church, Tunnel in a former train station, the infamous Studio 54 (albeit past its prime by my arrival in the later 80's), Palladium and so many others. The drinking age was changed from 19 to 21 on December 1, 1985, the first months I was there. I was only 16. But, I looked older and had a fake ID. Plus, it was Manhattan pre-Giuliani. My hardest problem with getting into clubs, especially with friends, was "the part." I could dress it up right and I looked older, albeit cute more than manly. I was 5'10 and 135 lbs. Some of these clubs, particularly the Palladium, who had an owner Steve Rubell from Studio 54, had guests picked out of a crowd, not from a queue. I went a couple times with 2 friends for sure both times and perhaps 3 at least one of them. Andy, Jim and Oleg were my posse at Morristown High. They went to great efforts to clean up and looked nice, but besides all the screaming B&T (bridge and tunnel - a very NYC term) crowd that was exactly back of the list, Oleg had the nicest clothes but looked like a deer in headlights. He is a Russian immigrant and I will later tell some funny stories with translation of words and such and just his personality in general. Jim and Andy were very attractive young men, not alien to the city at all, but nightlife, "playing the game" of the 80's, not so much. While they had some interest in dabbling in adventures in the city, they also wanted to literally pitch a tent in one of their backyards together when they got back (and no, there is any other story to follow). I have no idea about Andy but I wonder if Jim has seen NYC much other than when obligated to visit family since he graduated high school. He works for the US National Park Service and lives way out West last I saw on Facebook. That was always his true passion. At 16-17 years old, this was a teenage adventure with the crazy fucking new kid up the street. Funny enough, however, the only reason we EVER got into the Palladium is Jim's cousin (?), some relative, was a doorman and pulled us in and I want to say we didn't even pay a cover. These clubs were full of drugs, though I will say something I never engaged at that point in my life. Though readily available, I never knew how or was willing to even find out how to acquire them. There was a lot of sexual activity often as well with back rooms and such, depending on the night, though most of those such evenings and my engagement in them came later. I remember at the Palladium finding myself down in this area with couches and then just darker and darker spaces where it seemed anything goes with anyone. Men and women, men and men, men with 2 women, 2 men and a woman, more than anything I had yet seen in porn. It was sensory overload for even overly adventurous me and I turned around and decided I wasn't ready to throw myself into that fire.

I did go to Studio 54 once, perhaps twice. It was no longer in its heyday, more in a pathetic revival period. I am actually not sure if this was in my junior or senior year, but a relevant story still the same. I met a "girl" there named Meritta or something like that and her "sister" whose name I don't recall. I am guessing they were Puerto Rican. My multicultural identification skills were far more limited than today. The interest was there though. They lived in Harlem; not today's Harlem but Harlem of 1985. I drove them home that evening in my Dad's Cadillac Fleetwood. I have no idea in hell why I had that car in the city. I can guarantee I also should not have been driving. It probably also wasn't smart for me to be cruising through Harlem in the middle of the night dropping people off at the projects. They later invited me to a party. I attended. I really liked Meritta. I took a train to the city. A subway up and brought a bottle of cheap rum. At the party, I learned that Meritta is not the sister but Mother and about my Mother's age. I consumed a lot of rum. Never drink cheap rum. Simply, I've now gone from being urban adventurous to suicidal. A young white guy overdressed, totally shit-faced stumbling down stairs in a housing project, staggering to the subway in Harlem in that period is asking to be killed. It wasn't my objective, at least not consciously. I ended up on a bus to Hoboken to get my train to Morristown. (Telling this again tells me that it was my junior year because both the Fleetwood left our family and direct train service to New York began by my senior year.) I ended up throwing up on the the bus. I ended up being thrown off the bus. I sat under a tree, no clue where I was with a raincoat covered in puke. I don't recall how I figured my way home, but I did. Just remember, I couldn't reach in my pocket and ask for directions, call a Lyft, text a friend, even call home.

The Limelight, NYC. 660 6th Avenue, NYC.