Night Out in New York City

Just so you know from the beginning, I’m a little white girl wasp; that’s with a capital WASP. I’m married to a white guy, same letters. Raised in a shorthaired, clean-shaven, no drinking, no smoking, no dancing, cards or movies Baptist church, that’s me. When I was a kid, my piano teacher, who was the organist of our church at the time, got kicked out for being gay. My favorite great uncle was gay too, and certain family members still whisper that label when they talk about him. We did move a lot, I was in eight different schools, three were high schools in two states and another country. Friends were few and far between. I ended up at art school because I liked to draw. The kids at this school had the world on me. They all came from Sophistication, USA, or at least New York City. I came from Sheltered, and somehow I skated through all the stuff that goes on in an art school total innocence intact. It never touched me, and I was probably, no, definitely according to my classmates, annoyingly self-righteous to boot. But people accepted me anyway, because all artists are outcasts of some sort, even the goody-two-shoes sort, join the club. “Not Fitting In” is my middle name. I graduated, got married right away, and after a couple false starts moved to Brooklyn and took a job in the Midtown Manhattan Garment District.

Yet again, everyone had their own brand of not fitting in. The company I got a job with had hired an Italian designer, a Muslim Turkish converter to deal with the import end of things, a Chinese American assistant whose mother was the foreman of a sweatshop downtown, a Hungarian Jewish couple, division heads, who remembered running home from school the day the Russians surrounded Budapest with tanks, a Russian artist who bought stolen “black market” phone cards in Grand Central Terminal and used them to call his mother in Moscow on Sundays, a gay bodybuilding salesman from New Jersey on steroids and the person I thought of as normal then, me. It worked. Incidentally, the cleaning lady had been a dental hygienist before she moved to America. Her credentials weren’t accepted in the States so she cleaned offices after 5 to make a living.

The designer, who hired me through a proxy because his English wasn’t all that good, was gay too. It was kind of love at first sight, in a non-romantic way of course, what I mean to say is, we hit it off straight away. I loved the way he blushed whenever he mentioned “sheets” because when you add an Italian accent, it sounds like a swear word. We made a pact that if we were ever both alone and lonely on this earth, we’d get married and move back to Italy together. He had a permanent place there in an apartment building owned by his parents. He was unfailingly kind, funny, generous with his time and talent, and mentored me in a gracious way I have always appreciated.

At the time, my husband, who had ambitions as a musician, was leaving on music tours for three or four weeks at once, and I had lots of free time. I’d go shopping with my boss on the weekends, try on clothes I couldn’t possibly afford, although he’d sometimes buy something for himself at Paul Smith, we’d go to movies, hang out with his boyfriend of the moment and have dinner at his apartment. He taught me how to make mushroom risotto, his mother’s recipe, lemon chicken, and pesto. And he used to make the best chocolate pudding for dessert, from scratch. On the other hand, he regularly set off the fire alarm in his apartment while making toast and taking a shower at the same time and he would call me afterward, convulsing me with laughter over descriptions of running down from the eighth-floor dripping in his towel and listening to lectures from the fire crew on toast making while standing almost naked on the street at the edge of the East Village.

One of the times my husband was away, he invited me to go out clubbing with him, his boyfriend, and a couple of his artist friends. This was totally outside my experience, but it sounded like fun, something new. I met them at his apartment. He gave me the eye; probably no way I was going to get into a club the way I was dressed. So he pulled a suit out of his closet, it was Armani, or Valentino, and told me to put it on, no shirt. We were about the same size, so it looked pretty good. We slicked back my hair into a long, high ponytail, added some super red Chanel lipstick I’d invested in, a bit more eyeliner, and off we went to meet his friends.

The first place we went that night was the Copa, uptown. After a few minutes huddled on the steps, they decided to let us into the place. We took a spot near the stage and tall, leggy men in drag started a runway walk. I looked around, I think I might have been the only woman in the place but dressed in my Victor/Victoria suit I was getting a kick out of the show and everything else. After the show all the guys decided to go downtown to a club they knew of and we piled into a couple cabs and went somewhere downtown.

In Manhattan in those days, the parks were, even Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library, all surrounded by chain-link fences topped with razor wire. You didn’t venture into the Alphabet Avenues except between the hours of 10 AM and 2 PM, didn’t go north of 86th Street if you wanted to keep your wallet and your life, or west of 8th Avenue. Soho was OK but the neighborhood east of Broadway and south of Houston above Chinatown was touch and go. The boundaries were very clearly defined. We went west. It was dark and quiet in some warehouse district, all old buildings made of brick, a few cobblestones poking up through the asphalt in places. I don’t remember seeing any street signs. We got out of the cab at a corner and suddenly we were in a long line in the middle of nowhere. Total silence. After about 20 minutes of standing there, you could see your breath faintly, a guy came along, picked us out of the lineup, and sent us to the head of the line and in through a narrow door.

We walked through a wide vestibule and some columns and suddenly we were in a two-story space with a huge bar, pounding music, and I kid you not, 500-600 guys. There were disco balls, but it wasn’t ‘70’s disco music playing. It was late ‘80’s, early ‘90’s club music. Men in leopard print Tarzan loincloths with Flintstone-style bones tied into their hair were gyrating to “Everybody Dance Now” on square raised pillars in the center of the packed floor. My friends left me standing next to the bar for a while and a few people came up to invite me to dance. At some point in the evening, I found myself dancing with the male version of Barbara Bush with a wig in her hairstyle and her iconic three-strand string of beads. That night of dancing was probably the most fun I’ve ever had. At the end of it, about 5 AM, we started walking across town back to my friend’s apartment. No cabs, no traffic, no people at that hour. He and his boyfriend were arm-in-arm ahead of me laughing over something and suddenly I felt alone and awkward for the first time. Maybe I was there to be the decoy woman in the group.

It was still early days for “coming out” and “being gay” and there had been instances where guys were assaulted and hurt on the street. I wasn’t insulted, I felt sad that such a measure was necessary for them, and flattered that I was trusted, but still, it made me suddenly realize how different my “normal” world was.

Over time, many of guys I knew were lost to AIDS, became HIV positive, struggled with health issues. I moved out of the city, had children, changed careers and we’ve lost touch with each other, but I’ll never forget the time and place when our worlds collided. And who knows, I could still end my days in Italy married to a friend. Stranger things have happened.