Seventh Avenue South Read online

  To most kids in clubland, you were nothing if you couldn’t give out attitude. That’s why Donnie was different. He didn’t need attitude. He knew he was the shit without lifting a finger. He could be kind without losing face.

  We watched The Hunger with Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve, and David Bowie. Throughout the movie, always at the right place to talk, Donnie would ask me a question. “Can you believe that’s Janet from Rocky Horror?” or “Isn’t it amazing that Catherine Deneuve’s face is on all the money in France?”

  I didn’t know that about Catherine Deneuve. It must have just happened, because in French class in 1983, our teacher told us it was a woman named Mireille Mathieu.

  “I went and got one.” Doreen holds up a 10 franc note with Catherine Deneuve’s face staring out at me.

  “Shh!” Doreen had spoken over some important dialogue, so we rewound the tape a minute.

  Right then, at that very moment, on a huge sofa covered with dirty clothes, I felt at peace. I felt accepted. I felt important. I felt like I mattered. It was only an instant, then it evaporated into an invisible cloud of glitter. The door opened and a neighbor scurried in.

  “Don’t mind me, I’m just borrowing a spoon.” She rifled through the kitchen drawers and made a lot of racket.

  “Who’s that?”

  “That’s Mary Junk.” Donnie whispered it softly. “Her real name’s Mary Jay, but she does a lot of dope, and the name kinda stuck.”

  Mary Junk hollered from the kitchen, “I heard you. And you left out Marilyn Heroin and Miss Mary Smack.” She barged out of the kitchen and glared at the four of us. “Huh. The Hunger? Isn’t that like the fifth time you watched it?”

  Donnie rolled his eyes. “Eighth, and I’m not done.”

  When Mary Junk left, I couldn’t help myself.

  I turned to Bill. “So, she can just come in here whenever she wants?”

  Bill stammered, “Y-yeah. We’re a little afraid of her. She knifed a guy in Tompkins Square.”

  The doorbell rang. Doreen ushered in a seven-foot-tall giantess of a woman in a tuxedo. She was pear shaped, with brownish skin and giant dark brown eyes. Her short hair hung in un-coiffed clumps by her ears. She was not pretty, but her smile was very disarming. She held up a handful of clean syringes. “Here you go. Use them in good health.”

  Donnie took them from her, thanked her, and asked her to have a seat. She took up a lot of room on the sofa because she was so tall, but also because she was fat.

  “I’m Gloria.” She offered a hand. I shook hands, despite the attitude rule.

  “Ethan.”

  “You’re Ethan? Wow! Fleur talks about you non-stop.”

  Doreen started a side conversation with Donnie. I couldn’t hear all of it, but Doreen wanted to get high. The new influx of needles started a chain reaction.

  “I’m diabetic,” Gloria said. “I reuse my needles a couple times, so I always have brand new leftovers. That way these guys can be safe.”

  Donnie interrupts. “Ethan, do you do drugs?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Nothing?”

  “They don’t work on me. I tried cocaine, marijuana - nothing. I just felt weird but nothing I wanted to feel again.”

  “Cocaine is like that; you have to snort a lot before it starts working.” Doreen chimed in.

  Donnie continued, “See the thing is, cocaine is the only drug you can get at five in the morning.”

  I nod. “I don’t mind. I don’t like it, but you can do it.”

  Donnie put a hand on my shoulder and gazed into my eyes.

  “You don’t like it because you never shot it up before.”

  I’d waded into the deep end. “Don’t needles hurt?”

  “Ethan, for five bills, I could get you so fucked up.”

  I didn’t consider myself worthy of being Donnie’s peer, so I didn’t recognize this as peer pressure. I gave Donnie my five. Doreen and Bill ponied up a five each.

  Doreen asked, “Which one are you going to?”

  “The Chinese one on 10th.”

  “Their stuff is stepped on bigtime,” Bill protests

  “They’re the only ones open this late.”

  “True.”

  Donnie collected five from Bill, Doreen and me. Gloria didn’t do cocaine because of her diabetes.

  When Donnie got back, he had a little paper bindle made from a Chinese newspaper. Donnie carefully opened it. Inside, along with the cocaine, was a strip of glossy paper, just like a fortune cookie. It read, “Big Winner. Come back claim prize.”

  Doreen peered at it, wrinkling her nose. “What do you think the prize is?”

  Donnie said, “I have no idea.”

  “Save it, and you can go back and see.”

  Donnie poured out piles of white powder into four spoons. Mine was less. “You don’t need as much, trust me. I don’t want you to have a heart attack.”

  Doreen blurted, “I’m smaller, I don’t need that much. You can have half of mine, Donnie.”

  Bill agreed. “I have a heart condition, not so much.”

  Donnie had too much. “I can’t take all this at once.” He put some coke back into the newspaper bindle.

  Gloria agreed to hit me while the others shot up on their own. She had a lot of practice and I barely felt a thing until the plunger went down. Instantly, I was a different person. I was lucky. I was happy. We all spoke a mile a minute and Donnie rewound the movie to his favorite part where Catherine Deneuve says, “You’ll be back. When the hunger knows no reason!”

  Crashing was awful. Donnie parceled out the rest, and we got high a second time.

  Doreen put her hands on my face, gazing into my eyes. “You’re so beautiful, Ethan.”

  “Uh, no. I’m not.”

  Doreen’s eyes popped. “You are! How can you not see it?”

  “I’m alone. I don’t have anyone.”

  She frowned and lit a red Marlboro. She offered me one, but I shook my head.

  Bill picked up the fortune from the cocaine bundle. “Do you think maybe we won more cocaine?”

  Donnie examined the strange message. “I’ll go find out.”

  While Donnie was out, we crashed. Bill put his head between his knees and moaned. Doreen passed out on the couch. It was just me and gargantuan Gloria.

  “So, you go to Fleur’s school, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll bet it’s nice. Are you a rich kid?”

  “I’m a scholarship student,” I said. “My mom doesn’t have much money.”

  Gloria smiled. “Fleur’s a sweetheart and you are too. That school must be a great fuckin’ place.”

  I thought about Concord Academy. It was a great fuckin’ place. The kids all had so much money, they didn’t care that I was poor. I got limo rides, invites to crazy rich parties and free trips to New York with Fleur. It was a great place.

  Doreen stirred on the couch. “Is Donnie back? I need some more cocaine.”

  When Donnie returned, he had a package under his arm. It was a rectangular wrapped box, maybe 5 inches by 10 by 20.

  We gathered around.

  Bill asked, “What is it?”

  Donnie shrugged.

  Doreen said, “Open it! There’s gotta be cocaine in there somewhere. What if it’s all cocaine, the whole thing? We’ll be millionaires!”

  Donnie tore away the paper to reveal a cheap lacquerware tea set with a floral motif.

  Doreen tore it open, searching for the hidden bindles of coke, but there was nothing.

  Donnie laughed. It was contagious. We felt like shit, but Donnie’s laugh just sent us into hysterics. “That is the weirdest fucking thing that’s ever happened while copping, and I’ve copped a lot of dope.”

  Doreen managed to talk through fits of giggles. “You’ve copped on Avenue C and this is more bizarre.”

  “Avenue D!” Donnie added. “Nothing like this has ever happened.”

  “It’s a nice teaware set,” Gloria
said.

  Donnie handed it to her. “It’s yours. Thanks for the rigs.”

  ✽✽✽

  So, I’m getting to how all this is connected. Before I left the apartment, I gave Donnie my address in Newton. I was one of those people who said I would write but never did. Some of my friends, like Miriam, wrote long flowing prose in magic markers. Donnie used black ink, and he decorated each envelope into a work of glammy goth art. A week later, back home, the first letter came with a high heel shoe and a reclining vampiress surrounding my address. His letters were full of talk about what he did, how he met somebody at a Nina Hagen concert or how he got fired from work. Life in New York sounded so much more interesting than being a day student at a boarding school. He talked a lot about a best friend named Gia who was in a band called “Latex Sex Camp.”

  I wrote him back and talked about being lonely and bored and how I wished I could spend my life in New York.

  During that Boston summer, I found a job. I saw an old cranky guy in a storefront putting up a temporary sign for Resurrection Records. I poked my head in.

  “What the fuck you want?” Andre asked.

  “Uh, I was wondering if you were looking for help?”

  “Yeah, get in here.” I worked four hours, but he didn’t pay me. It was a “trial”.

  “Come back tomorrow. It’s $3.50 an hour under the table.”

  And like that, I started working at Resurrection Records. It was a New York store, which explained Andre’s surly demeanor. He had a wife, Gladys, who was Satan in black jeans. I thought Andre was mean. He was Bugs Bunny in comparison to Gladys, who frequently took me to the back room to lecture me on my worthlessness as a human being.

  “What the fuck do you think this is, Ethan, a party? This is a business. I can’t have you playing music you like. You play the music the customers want to hear.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t call me ma’am or I’ll take your motherfucking head and slam it in that safe.”

  “Yes, Gladys.”

  I was terrified. My first job as a paid employee was a labor of Hercules: take the giant picture sized mirror and scrape the silver off the back using a razor blade and nothing else.

  “We’re gonna make it a two-way mirror,” Gladys said.

  Andre shook his head in dismay. They needed to just buy a two-way mirror, but he couldn’t tell Gladys.

  After two solid days, I managed to clear a hole the size of a pack of matches. Andre came back and told me to stop. The next day, he smashed it with a chair. “Don’t tell Gladys. It was an accident, you got me?”

  Eventually, Gladys’ ill-intentioned lectures got to me, and I believed she was right: I was a terrible employee. I didn’t deserve to be there, so it was okay that they paid me less than minimum wage under the table. They broke my spirit. They reinforced my own belief that I was worthless.

  When summer ended, they acted like it was a personal slap in the face that I was returning to school and could not work for them. “We don’t need a fuckin’ piece of shit like you waltzing in here and then going off to your fancy private school. Just stay the fuck away from here.” Such a sweet send-off.

  ✽✽✽

  It was senior year, and I had applied to six colleges. I got into five of them. Harvard didn’t want me, and I didn’t want them. Four of the colleges were in New York, and one was in Annapolis, Maryland. Sarah Lawrence in Bronxville sounded like the most fun, NYU had a film program, the New School was artsy fartsy, and Columbia was the most prestigious. St. John’s in Maryland was the most interesting, but I couldn’t picture myself living in Annapolis, Maryland. It was a Navy town like Vallejo, where I grew up. It must be a dump.

  My mother said she wasn’t paying for it, so she didn’t care where I went. She had been accepted to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Vermont. She was going to start her spiritual life. I was relieved. It meant I could go live in New York. I knew I could find a job and make it all happen.

  I got a full scholarship to Sarah Lawrence, which meant I wouldn’t have to work very much. NYU was a full scholarship, too, but Film school had all these expenses they estimated in the tens of thousands to make your film. The Eugene Lang College at the New School also offered me free tuition. That school was the kind of place where you got a bachelor’s degree, but you felt like you were at community college. I had good friends there from years gone by. When I visited it was just a hippy dippy liberal lefty kind of place. The school itself was comprised of three floors in a skyscraper near Union Square. It was cool, but it didn’t excite me much. I went uptown to Columbia, and I was astonished. It wasn’t like New York. The campus looked like a Capitol mall with skyscrapers flanking it. There was a huge expanse of green grass in the courtyard. It was like the school was thumbing its nose at Manhattan and saying, “We own this grass, you can’t build on it.” I was impressed.

  That was a short visit. Fleur was studying for a midterm in the NYU library. I was alone in the one room 9th Street apartment with her ferret, Ivy, who scared me. I decided to take a stroll down St. Mark’s. I passed Donnie’s apartment and debated ringing the doorbell. It was still chilly out, but the sun was bright. Then I heard a familiar voice from across the street. “Ethan?”

  It was Donnie, and he was accompanied by a girl with multicolored hair that ran down her back. She had tattoos covering both arms. Her outfit and hair combined made her a cross of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters with Gene Simmons from KISS.

  “I’m Gia.” she held out a hand covered in spiked rings. Another no-attitude handshaker. But she got a cruel pleasure out of squeezing my hand like an iron maiden.

  Donnie scolded me. “Ethan, I didn’t know you were here!” I must admit, I considered calling Donnie to let him know, but I was on such a short trip and it was all business. I didn’t want to stay up until dawn doing drugs and then take a tour of campus.

  “It was a last-minute thing. I got into college here and I’m deciding which one.”

  Gia made a little gasping noise that I realized later was a hallmark of her communication with anyone she liked. “You’re gonna be in New York?”

  I nodded.

  “Which school?”

  “I’m deciding between NYU, Columbia, The New School and Sarah Lawrence.”

  Gia and Donnie both said at the same time, “Columbia.”

  I smiled. “It’s nice and all, but it’s the only one that didn’t give me free tuition. It’s like ten thousand a semester.”

  Donnie puffed on a smoke. “No question, Columbia. You’re set for life! My friend Buzzi goes there, and she’s gonna own the art world when she’s done.”

  It’s true, the very coolest of the cool people I knew went there after Concord. And Miriam had gotten in, too. She was hoping we could be mutual anchors for each other there. Her mother had even called me and told me I had to go there. I was leaning but hadn’t fallen in love with the place.

  “It’s pretty too,” I said.

  Gia gasped. “I’ve never been there.”

  Donnie laughed. “You grew up here and you’ve never been to Columbia?”

  Gia grinned. “I don’t go above 23rd Street unless it’s an emergency.”

  “We’re going over to Gia’s to dye my hair, wanna come?”

  “I can’t do drugs,” I said.

  Gia gave a devilish snicker. “I don’t do drugs. Donnie knows the rules.”

  It was early afternoon, and I had to catch a train the next day.

  Gia ran her fingers through my blue-black hair. “Donnie have you felt his hair? It’s so healthy!”

  Donnie, embarrassed, ran his fingers through. “Ooh, silky.”

  The walk to Gia’s was one I hadn’t yet taken. We went down St Mark’s to Astor Place, where we stopped to rotate the giant Rubik’s cube in the traffic island.

  It became 8th Street, which is where Marjorie Meadow runs her clothing store. Jimmy waved to people inside. One very pretty boy, the aforementioned celebutante Percival Laydown, came ru
nning out. He frowned. “Oh, hi, Gia.” She didn’t say anything. You could hear a pin drop.

  Percival was pretty and dizzy with curly black hair. He looked at me, “Hey, I know you. You’re Fleur’s friend. We met in Fleur’s magic restroom at the Palladium”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “Ethan, right?” I was impressed he remembered. He was such a celebutante. Nobody else in New York bothers remembering the names of strangers.

  “I’ve got a show at the Limelight next month. Will you come see me?”

  Donnie said, “The Slimelight? Why there?”

  “It’s got a good sound system.”

  “It’s not very drag-friendly.”

  Percival tapped his foot nervously. “I hope people show up. I hate performing in giant spaces with a dozen people. It’s the worst.”

  When we reached the Washington Square Arch, I broke down and asked Gia why Percival threw her shade.

  “He used to be my roommate.” That was intended as a final answer, so I didn’t question it any further.

  I never realized how wide Manhattan was. We were at 5th Avenue. We started at 1st Avenue. So, four blocks going east-west was like 20 blocks going north-south. The cool weather was a relief. I didn’t want to sweat in front of the two coolest people in the world.

  We kept going south, further than I had ever walked, until we hit Bleecker Street.

  “How much farther is it?”

  “We’re almost there.” We walked past jazz clubs and old Italian restaurants where mobsters died. I was hungry.

  “We’ll stop at No-Name.”

  No-name was just that, a poorly lit pizzeria with dollar slices, a fat hairy chef with a grease-stained t-shirt, and of course it had no name. Slices at Original Mike’s and all those other competitors were two dollars. I could see why the no-name slice was so cheap when I asked for toppings. The grubby old man took out a cold, greasy slice from the case and put pepperoni the size of salami on it. The mushrooms came from a can. When it came out of the oven, the sauce was hot enough to burn the roof of my mouth, but the pepperoni was barely warm. Still, for a dollar, I was in no mind to complain. Plus, it was Gia’s suggestion and I didn’t know her very well.