A play about cocaine and faggotry for two voices
by Bob Laine
CHARACTERS:
The Cocaine Faggot
The Voice
This play was first produced in 2003 at Here theater in New York City as part of their solo performance workshop series. It was directed and performed by Bob Laine and Hank Wagner.
Production Notes: This play is a solo show with a second voice that can either be performed as a voice over or with an actor or actress physically on stage. Stage directions and set pieces are only suggestions and can be ignored or elaborated on as needed.
Scene 1: Begin
There is a chair and a small table center stage. To the left is a single bed, to the right is some suggestion of a car. Along the back and in the dark are suggestions of booth doors like you would see in an adult book store. On the stage left wall are a dozen or so drawings of horses. On the stage right wall there are a couple of heterosexual porn posters.
Cocaine Faggot:
Her two older sisters were identical twins and they drew pictures of horses, which of course were also identical. My older sister knew the twins and would carry home their lookalike equestrian etchings and tape them two by two on her bedroom walls. Whenever my sister felt the need to refer to the artists of the drawings she called them The Twins Who Drew Horses. I guess that’s where I got the idea to call Penny, the twin’s younger sister, the one my age, to call her The Horse-Drawing Twin’s Younger Sister Who Had Nothing To Play With.
See, I’m talking about my first sexual experience, in California, with Penny, in the fourth grade- a prepubescent peep show between adjoining carports. I’ll show her mine and then she’ll show me...Nothing! Well, at least that’s how I saw it. I mean here I was standing there, drawers ankled, offering Penny and the world the pleasures of my young penial wisp and I’ll be damned if she wasn’t wispless! The horse-drawing twin’s younger sister had nothing to play with. Reciprocity, it dawned on me, was completely impossible. This was the only coherent thought I had before Penny’s mother stumbled upon us frozen in our compromising position- wisp and wispless.
It is only obvious that much overreaction followed.
Even when I tried to assure my mother as well as Penny’s mom, who shall now forever be known as The It’s Rape It’s Rape I Know Rape When I See It Neighbor Bitch, even when I assured them that they didn’t need to worry, that I had no interest in seeing Penny, clothed or not, ever again- they didn’t believe me. I remember thinking they were so silly. They just didn’t get it. Of course at the time, I really didn’t get it either. I only knew that if there was anyone I wanted to see naked it wasn’t Penny. It was Richard, the boy across the street.
My brother and I had often played with Richard and his sister while our moms sat perched in fraying lawn chairs talking about whatever it is Air Force lifer wives talk about. It hadn’t taken long for me to notice, but still not quite understand, that I enjoyed touching Richard a lot more than I anticipated similar tactile experiences with his sister. And although I would never be brave enough to play I’ll Show You Mine with Richard, I did become quite adept at initiating wrestling holds and other manly touching sequences whenever possible. It was during one of these sequences, and of course it was a hot day, it was California, and Richard and I were defying the sun’s swelter, rolling around and smashing grass. And at some point, I don’t know maybe I lingered too long, but it became clear that Richard was becoming uncomfortable. Wouldn’t you know it, even then I was falling for the straight guy. Anyway, Richard negotiated an awkward dismount and stuttered something, changing the subject in that Let’s Not Go There- Ah, Here’s Something Interesting way. I was disappointed but still clung to his every word like a booger you can’t get off your finger. I visually sculpted him while he told me he had had a younger brother. His name was John and he was one year younger. But he had died. He had swallowed a stick while playing in the yard and died. He had been killed by a stick.
The sharpness of the story shocked me out of my gush and instinctively I challenged him. He was lying. That didn’t happen, it couldn’t have happened, I would have heard about it before now. But Richard persisted and goading begot goading and the next thing you know I’m marching up to our mom’s collapsible thrones and laying down the challenge. I call Richard’s bluff. I announce his preposterous fabrication loudly and arrogantly to his own mother’s face. RICHARD SAYS HE HAD A BROTHER WHO DIED BY SWALLOWING A STICK. That’s what I said to Richard’s mother’s face- which collapsed like a slo-mo newsreel of a building demolition. As her features fell, I could see my own mother’s features harden and it was clear that my own mother had known, and it was clear that I had fucked up- majorly.
It is only obvious that much overreaction followed.
To this day I really don’t know how my first sexual experiences with Penny and Richard devolved into scenes from a Tennessee William’s play, but at least now I understand how appropriate that is. The clarity of hindsight tells me that whether I like it or not The Horse-Drawing Twin’s Younger Sister Who Had Nothing To Play With and The Boy Whose Brother Swallowed A Stick And Died were the start.
They are where I begin.
blackout
Scene 2: Why Tell
A spotlight comes up on the Cocaine Faggot sitting in the center stage chair.
Voice:
WHY HE SHOULDN’T TELL HIS PARENTS HE’S GAY
Cocaine Faggot:
They’ll be disappointed, they’ll be upset, they’ll be furious, they’ll die
Voice:
WHY HE SHOULDN’T TELL HIS PARENTS HE’S GAY
Cocaine Faggot:
What they don’t know won’t hurt them, why fix what ain’t broke?, ignorance is bliss, they’ll die happy
Voice:
WHY HE SHOULDN’T TELL HIS PARENTS HE’S GAY
Cocaine Faggot:
They’ll treat him like he was delicate, they’ll be nervous when he is around his niece, they’ll disown him, they’ll stop giving him money
Voice:
WHY HE SHOULDN’T TELL HIS PARENTS HE’S GAY
Cocaine Faggot:
They’ll blame themselves, they’ll blame god, they’ll blame him, they’ll blame Charles Nelson Riley
Voice:
WHY HE SHOULDN’T TELL HIS PARENTS HE’S GAY
Cocaine Faggot:
They’ll have to lie to their friends, they’ll have to lie to themselves, they’ll have to lie to him, even after coming out he will still have to lie to them
Voice:
WHY HE SHOULDN’T TELL HIS PARENTS HE’S GAY
Cocaine Faggot:
They’ll constantly inquire about his health, they’ll give him autographed posters of Boy George, they’ll stock the fridge with bottled water when he visits, they’ll assume every male friend of his is gay and is sleeping with him
Voice:
WHY HE SHOULDN’T TELL HIS PARENTS HE’S GAY
Cocaine Faggot:
They might embrace it, they might buy subscriptions to Out magazine, they might buy Melissa Etheridge albums, they might want to march in parades
Voice:
WHY HE SHOULDN’T TELL HIS PARENTS HE’S GAY
Cocaine Faggot:
Because he doesn’t want to!
Whenever I tell someone I’m gay- which I would only do if they were a close and longtime friend and I had just unsuccessfully hit on them; whenever I tell someone I’m gay- which would only happen if I were with close and longtime friends at a party fucked up and they just casually asked me ‘So what up? Are you gay?’; whenever I tell someone I’m gay- which could only possibly occur if someone just revealed to me some detail of such personal portent that I had no choice but to top their confession with my own like when this new girl at work just one half hour into her first shift asked me if she could get some wine coolers from the 7-11 next door to drink while she sliced and then before I could register any shock over her desire to consume alcohol, at work, while slicing, at 8 AM blurted out that she was not only racist but a lesbian to boot- only if something like that happened would I tell someone I’m gay and then I would only tell them after I assured them that being a racist and a lesbian at the same time was impossible or at least in very bad taste.
Whenever I tell someone I’m gay which, obviously, I don’t do often- but when I do- I always know what to expect. I always know what I will know. I know I will have the answers to their questions. I know I’ll use the right words. I know I will react with the perfect combination of body angle, facial tick and verbal utterance so as to make them feel comfortable, guilt free and sure of their words when they say ‘It’ referring to the homo thing ‘Of course, doesn’t affect...well, affect anything’. I have the timing down- just the right pause before I reply ‘Of course it doesn’t affect anything. I never thought it would’.
Whenever I tell someone I’m gay, which I don’t enjoy doing, but after it’s said and done, after Q and A/ show and tell/ the lecture they never heard in biology class, after all that I don’t know because I can’t but I’m pretty sure or let’s just say I believe it is the unease of the resulting quiet that gets them thinking, that lets them start paraphrasing and rearranging the question in their heads. The question that I’m sure was one of the first ones that crossed their minds when I told them I was gay. The question that they were afraid or embarrassed to ask and only now in silence find themselves helplessly reconsidering. The question that no matter how much they manipulate it in their thoughts in this noiselessness seems so hard to ask so much so that they give up and in a fit of abandonment they break the silence and as if they were asking something as benign as whether or not I like Merchant Ivory movies they say it. They exhale the question. ‘You are being safe, right?’
Whenever I tell someone I’m gay, which never seems easy, I know whether the silence is the cause or not that we will eventually get to this question. You’re being safe, right? Of course, I know the answer to this question. In this day and aids we all know the answer. We know it like our birthdate. We can recite it like our social security number. Even the people asking the question know the answer. It’s maybe their intonation, or just a nod, a lilt in the shoulders, that tells me the answer they are expecting. Indeed, the only answer they will accept. I sometimes wonder why the question is asked at all. I sometimes feel angry that decades ago it didn’t need to be.
Whenever I tell someone I’m gay, which I try to avoid, I know the question will be asked. I know I may get mad, not at the person asking (because I knew they would ask it, because I know they have to) but at the attention the question demands. I get angry at the visions it forces.
Whenever I tell someone I’m gay, which seems to be happening way too often, I know their questions will take my thoughts. I know there is nothing I can do.
blackout
Scene 3: Drive
Lights up on the Cocaine Faggot who is now sitting in a car.
Cocaine Faggot:
Your car doin four miles per ten pm Friday sludging behind bug-eyed buggy conveyed tourists showing their children of proportionally equal eye bulbousness the young pretty drunks of Rush Street. First thoughts- run them the fuck over, then passing that rage. Second thoughts- the flat-eyed buggy man pivoting back and with thick voice and large gestures telling his passengers that all these pretty people they see on Rush street are not all drunks, oh no, many of them are cokeheads too. Next thoughts- flat-eyes bringing the buggy to a stop, his passengers following his confident finger as he points you out like a landmark, as he tells them with full tourist guide gleam that the little Michael J. Fox bright lights big city boy whose been riding their ass for the last two blocks, for example, just left a basement bar where through subtle exchanges of a match book and a cigarette pack he acquired seventy dollars worth of cocaine while playing a video card game against his 300 pound, imagine Cannon or Mr. French only black and without the accent, coke dealer- a card game that he won, which thinking about it now he feels wasn’t such a good idea at least that’s what he’s thinking when he’s not thinking about running the buggy in front of him the fuck over. More thoughts- bubble-eyed family staring at you very hard for several moments then collectively awing and nodding, like one caused the other, like they had never awed without nodding in their life. Final thoughts- run them the fuck over.
When you strike left on north, the buggy man and the family are all dead. In your mind the carriage is destroyed and only the cute innocent poor horses were spared and reunited with their family members through an exhaustive search process that culminated with an appearance on Sally Jesse Raphael.
blackout
Lights up on Cocaine Faggot still in the car.
Cocaine Faggot:
I am one of the safest drivers I know
Voice:
he says speeding seventy miles per in freezing rain on a toll way while smoking a bowl and tripping on acid and he really means it, it’s really true.
Cocaine Faggot:
In fact
Voice:
he thinks
Cocaine Faggot:
if anyone could see me right now they would one, not be able to detect that I was on acid, two, would only know I was toking if they saw me hit the pipe, and three, although they might believe I was traveling a little fast for the conditions, after a few moments of witnessing my expert handling of the vehicle they would easily conclude that I am one of the safest drivers they know.
Voice:
It is all true. Although he secretly knows it isn’t much of a test at all. The truth be known he only dropped an hour ago and by his standards the acid is quite mellow and just by being on acid the effects of the pot smoking are pretty much negated, he’s just going through the motions, as for the freezing rain it’s as weak as the LSD.
Cocaine Faggot:
Yes
Voice:
He finally must concede.
Cocaine Faggot:
What I feel is confirmation that I am a safe driver despite my acid-tripping pot-smoking fast-driving ways is really only proof that you can’t get good acid like you used to.
Voice:
It’s true.
blackout
Lights up on Cocaine Faggot still in the car.
Cocaine Faggot:
​
You are always afraid that you will forget the good things you think of to write because you’re too stoned when you think of them. Like now, tripping on Valentine’s Day, driving to the bookstore, image replicating like a mofo and you know you’ll forget it all. You must remember, that’s what you say to yourself.
You must remember the Valentines card you received from your parents. They’ve never sent one before. In fact you haven’t received a Valentines card from anyone since elementary school when everyone in your class was forced to give you one, even though you knew they all hated you. Be mine my ass you thought every February 14th K through 6th. And now at 30 plus, unattached as they whoever they are say, you receive a Valentines greeting- and it’s from your parents. Even living in Florida, they can tell. Even they know how pitiful you are.
They know, or at the very least suspect what you know and think about way too much. That at 30 plus, you have never had a lover. Oh, you’ve had sex, of course, but never with anyone whose name you knew or remembered, never with anyone you loved and who loved you. No, certainly never the mutual love sex thang. At 30 plus you have never really dated, you seem to only fall for the utterly unattainable and you masturbate with more regularity and frequency than you are sure a normal person should. Not that you are afraid of going blind. You just don’t like to imagine the fucked up hand palsy you’ll have when you get old and go catatonic.
It’s gotten to the point where even now, driving to the bookstore, instead of concentrating on what you are supposed to remember, you find yourself talking back to the radio- reminding all those warbling lovers lamenting their tragic losses that at least they loved. At least they can sing. At least they have recording contracts.
‘Alannis,’ you tell the radio, ‘you oughta know we all just feel so sorry for you’.
It’s to the point past desperate. It can’t be this hard. You see everyone else doing it. For everyone else, you believe, it’s routine. It’s something they put on their to-do lists, right after college or beauty school. For everyone else love fits, not always comfortably- but that’s a given.
You’re to the point where you’re considering becoming an alcoholic because they always have lovers. Co-dependents, you suspect, are easy to find.
The Cocaine Faggot leaves the car. Lights come up on the back drop of adult bookstore porn booths.
Downstairs at the adult bookstore, you can’t think of any more points- instead you are telling yourself that your way of living hasn’t helped things, but then you become distracted, visually arrested momentarily by the heterosexual porn posters on the walls. There are two. One is for a movie called Dirty Debutantes and it shows two women in lace nightwear. You think the women look frightened. You think the women look like plastic deer, who are scared. The other poster only has one woman- and it’s clear that her only association with fear is in causing it. You believe that even the most virile man’s penis would have to bow in reverence in this woman’s presence. Yes. You are convinced, if you were into this sort of thing, you would definitely buy the video the second poster advertises.
But you’re not into that sort of thing, and it’s that thought that brings you back, that reminds you why you’re here. The poem. Yes. Dammit, you have to remember all these details, all these lines, for the Valentines poem you are supposed to, but don’t you already know you’re not going to, read tonight at a Barnes and Nobles love theme spoken word event. It’s your embarrassment of not already having a love poem to read that has led you here. Tripping, haunting an adult bookstore trying to think of something interesting to say about your lack of a love life. Trying to remember the details through your haze for a poem that you won’t read tonight at Barnes and Nobles, a poem that you won’t read any night at any bookstore, including the one you are currently in.
That’s when you see the machine, the dispenser on the wall. You’ve seen it a hundred times, but well, I guess you never really saw it. Because it’s just now that you see that it says LOVE KITS, 50 cents. That’s all you think? Fifty cents for love. Then you notice that the love dispenser is next to a change machine. Just in case those in need of love arrived coinless. Or maybe, you imagine, it’s there for people like you who want to buy more than one love, for people like you who want to stockpile.
You wish it were that easy. You have radical thoughts that it is that easy for everyone else. You have even more radical thoughts that you can live without it. You are 30 plus, you haven’t died yet. It’s made you an asshole, but it hasn’t killed you. You don’t need a lover. Sex can still be had and you are not tied down. Love is not important.
Then why did you feel so great recently when, on four separate mornings over a two week period, declarations of love appeared in various forms- engraved in driver’s side window grime, finger scrawled in windshield covering snow, melted in back window ice- on your car? Well actually, the car was leased by your friend who got married and moved to England and made you the car baby-sitter, but anyway, why did those anonymous tidings send you reeling? Did they make you consider the possibility that love was attainable? That love was easy? That love was big and it appeared in loopy script on the windows of borrowed Toyotas? They did make you feel those things, at least until, quite by accident, you discovered that the automobile sized Hallmarks were left by the two neighbor kids who you only knew because once, in a fit of delusion, you let them borrow your Super Nintendo for one day and it took the girlfriend of a friend, someone with a lot more balls than you, to get it back two months later. That being your only contact with the little shits, you are not surprised they did it- you just wonder how they knew. Are you that obvious?
You shouldn’t be surprised. Hell, if your parents all the way in Florida know, and they’re sending you Valentines cards so they know, you are sure the whole city must know by now. Everyone knows about the lover-less closet homosexual who is 30 plus, who masturbates a lot and who can’t think of better things to do than watch gay porn while fabricating weak excuses to give Jeff for blowing off the Barnes and Nobles spoken word event. You’ve never written a love poem. That’s what you told Jeff when he asked you to read. You don’t do love you said. You’re not on speaking terms. Jeff, of course, said you were full of shit, and there’s some truth there, you know that. But you feel and believe, and why wouldn’t you, that your truth is truer.
The Cocaine Faggot returns to the car.
Driving home from the adult bookstore you are getting angry at your buzz for fucking with your memory. You have all these cool lines, and you’re losing them by the second. You must remember. The posters, the dispenser, those brats. Jesus, why do writers only forget their best lines?
That’s what you think. You are driving, dodging lights, and that’s what you think. It’s only moments before you decide that that line, ‘why do writers only forget their best lines’, is a good line. Yes. You must remember that line. You have to. So you repeat it to yourself seven times trying not to simultaneously think how ironic it would be to forget the line- ‘why do writers only forget their best lines’.
You know you can make it home, and you do. You always do. While you are going through beddie preps you repeat to yourself seven times that however the love poem turns out you have to end with the story about John’s question. The question, John, your friend, your very-heterosexual-so-of-course-you-fell-in-love-with-him friend, the question he asked you after you had made a pass at him and he had easily and comfortably, very nicely said he was flattered but well, he was heterosexual or something like that. You remember that you said blah, blah, blah but you were really just happy that he took it so great. Happy that he didn’t make you look stupid. You’re sure it was the awkward silence that prompted the question. The quiet made John ask you, in all sincerity you’re sure, that given your situation (being a huge closet homo), did you ever think that you would ever find someone to love? Since the night had already been too gothic and melodramatic, you certainly didn’t want John to see how much his question made you want to cry. So you turned away as you said you honestly didn’t know. The way you said it seemed to close the discussion, and so it was.
The Cocaine Faggot leaves the car and goes to the bed.
But you kept thinking of John’s question. And now, in bed, feeling warm, looking forward to falling asleep, you are thinking of the question again. Your last lazy thoughts are not about feeling guilty for ditching the reading. They are not about forgetting all your cool lines, or getting a Valentine from your parents. As you begin to fall, you think only of John’s question.
Will you ever find someone to love? It’s only in your sleep that you can imagine an answer.
The Cocaine Faggot falls asleep.
Voice:
Confusing boredom with peace again. Forgetting that being alone is not loneliness. Wondering what there is to write about right, why noise seems more attractive than silence.
And rumors you’ve heard that it takes static to make out clear, that happy cannot be unless sad were, and the doctor who tells you that your problem is that you are never satisfied; the problem is you always want what’s not now.
Firing that doctor and deciding to try acupuncture the next time you’re depressed. Amazed at how intense pain makes you forget your troubles.
Sleep- like waking would make you die. Fall into slumber so hard that dreams don’t try, that dreams don’t even dare. Hug the nothing so tight that it has to take you in, that it has to make you one with it.
And find a peace that is not known to the conscious- that is not allowed to drugs, meditation, masturbation, god or wheatgrass. Find a peace that you wouldn’t want to leave. A peace that would make you stand tear streaked and shaking in the terminal even ten minutes after you have watched it take off.
Rest now- like rising would stop your heart.
Quick to lie when there is no need. Guaranteed to leave parties when noone’s looking. Hopes to be picked last to avoid expectations. Prefers empty mailboxes and silent phones. Level of anxiety corresponds directly to the number blinking on answering machine’s message indicator.
Likes when plans are canceled. Relieved to be stood up. Agrees to vague commitments and then breaks them. Enjoys going to movies because it’s the only public place where no one is looking at you.
Reads the newspaper because it feels like being involved. Does the crossword in pen because it feels like being smart. Studies the weather page longer than he wants to. Memorizes the barometer readings of 17 states by accident.
Looks forward to sleep because it’s harder for closed eyes to cry.
Sleep for once without thinking of sex. Sleep for once without thinking of drugs. Sleep for once without thinking of money. Sleep for once without thinking of life. Sleep for once without thinking.
Force peace from absence of thought. Challenge yourself to be idle. Work at doing nothing. Try just being.
Tell yourself to live when you are awake, to exist while you sleep. Tell yourself you don’t need a thought for every breath, that flipping the pillow, switching sides and changing ends didn’t work the night before so it won’t work tonight, that lying still with your eyes closed unclothed in bed counts as sleep whether you’re awake or not.
Tell yourself that sleep shouldn’t come so hard. That it shouldn’t be so stubborn. Curse it even as it takes you.
blackout
Scene 4: Cocaine Faggot
Lights up as the Cocaine Faggot enters and performs the actions as dictated by the Voice.
Voice:
Enter many-coated with backpacked strapped insistence. Make tired tracks to fridge and the coke, classic kind canned. Grapple plastique literdom O Kesslers, slug, slug and a mighty
Cocaine Faggot:
hurumpff.
Voice:
Fold a wallet from your Levi’s. Slink the coke, Colombian kind baggied, from invisible flaps. Two fifties- one dust, one full.
Cocaine Faggot:
Well.
Voice:
You breathe the particles of one. Crinkle-twist the pouch, get it all. Inhale, just a nummie gloss, just a lip flare. Sooo, one teeny tiny line from the full one, yes and a mighty
Cocaine Faggot:
hurumpff.
Voice:
Stand still and do absolutely nothing for many many moments. Then remember to breathe, back to tasks-
Cocaine Faggot:
yes!
Voice:
Stow the rest of the coke with the fifteen hits of acid you got from the white separatist who works with you at the restaurant. The guy who places pepperonis while making disgusting holocaust puns about the au jus sauce. The guy who needles dough while claiming not to be a racist, but a separatist meaning he wants everyone else to move. The guy who slices rolls and says he’s anti-government meaning he doesn’t want to pay taxes. You once reminded this guy that taxes paid for his room and board while he was in prison, but you never made that mistake again.
Back to tasks-
Cocaine Faggot:
yes.
Voice:
You must put the powder with the Nazi acid which you have already appropriately secreted between the sleeves of a Chicago yellow pages. Next you want to take off your coats, but you know you can’t peel, you’re leaving.
Cocaine Faggot:
So, yes, next.
Voice:
You must brush your teeth. That’s next and very important. After all you can’t expect anyone to let you blow them if your breath smells and the toothpaste will also conceal the aroma of Kesslers fermenting in your mouth just in case you are pulled over and of course, there’s the other thing. Those dreams you have of armies of aids invading the cavities of your teeth, armies which naturally can only be eradicated with a brisk application of Aquafresh Sensitive.
Cocaine Faggot:
Soo, yes, next.
Voice:
You must brush your teeth.
It is during the act, mid froth with you grinning like rabies. It’s then that you wonder why all your straight friends who know you’re gay insist that you be completely open. You are spitting foam when you decide to tell your friends about Hitler pizza boy. After all, do your friends really think it’s in your best interest to come out to a man who expresses his attraction to a female by hitting you in the arm and asking you to check out the monster gash. More rinsing and spitting convinces you that of course as usual you are right.
Cocaine Faggot:
So, yes, next.
Voice:
It’s time to go. You’re engines are blaring, the nummies are fading.
blackout
Lights up on the Cocaine Faggot standing frozen in a teaching position. He will unfreeze on his lines and then freeze again in a different pose.
Voice:
This is the present. The future is something else. The future is not the present. We could begin with the future, but then everything happening now would be different. You would see everything that’s happening now askew. You would see the present glazed- the same donut as before but sporting a new sheen- the same donut but a decidedly different taste.
What he is afraid to write about, what he would never reveal, that’s what we want to know- until he tells us.
Cocaine Faggot:
It happens every day.
Voice:
He is not telling us this. He is telling this to his students. He is telling his students that people frequently use unethical persuasion techniques- techniques like the straw dog argument where the persuader overstates the opposition’s position to such a degree that it seems ridiculous.
Cocaine Faggot:
It happens every day
Voice:
he tells them again.
In the future he will blame this repetition for the glitch, until he realizes he would be falling prey to the post-hoc persuasion fallacy of ‘after this; therefore because of this’. Then he will decide to blame the glitch on his students.
The glitch, the awkward breathe he just now takes after he tells his students
Cocaine Faggot:
It happens every day
Voice:
is small. In his students time it is invisible, but in his warp the glitch is huge, the glitch is full. Its furnishings are images of him. Him last night nosing a fiddy of cola, multiplying lines by tokes carrying the swigs until it equaled fucked up, until the formula found himself on his knees bruising cement, smearing trash and cum with swollen possessed caps that didn’t care less cuz the face, the mouth, had a dick in it. Because the lips were smacking flappy- because all the heads were happy. The glitch is full of these images and the thought: what if his students could see that past, could see his last night?
Cocaine Faggot:
It happens every day
Voice:
said a third time and the glitch is over. It’s so tiny- not even enough of a pause to cause student’s pencils to stop. So small- not even the students sleeping in the back shift or rouse thinking class is over. Because this is the present, he doesn’t know that in the future the glitch will happen again. It will happen a lot: when he’s talking to his friends, when he’s talking to his co-workers, when he’s talking to the asshole at the DMV, when he’s talking to his mom. He’ll be telling her something and then not and in the space before he continues (a pause so thin his mother can’t even interrupt, his mother doesn’t even have time to ask ‘what’s wrong’) his visions will inflate. Maybe this time it’ll be a different member he’s mouthing, it’ll be different limbs ignoring their complaints because the libido is feeding. But every time it will be the same thought.
What if his mom could see him doing these things? How would the talk he’s currently having with his mom be changed after she’s seen what he’s done in the past, after she’s seen what he will do in the future? How would she see him right now after that? How would he taste to her then?
blackout
Scene 5: The Interview
Lights up on the Cocaine Faggot sitting in the chair. He is being interviewed and takes hits off his marijuana pipe intermittently.
Cocaine Faggot:
It all depends on the bookstore.
Voice:
He has said this many times already. Each time he pecks at the smoking bowl like he’s planting a kiss on a child’s neck.
Cocaine Faggot:
You see, the bookstore is for those guys who feel cruising in a rest area or public bathroom is degrading. Like flogging your dick while sitting on the john is more demeaning than flogging your dick in a nudie flick booth. Anyway, the bookstore is like closet homo stage two. They’re not ready for bars, but they’ve moved beyond the urinals.
Voice:
He’s explaining why cruising isn’t easy- defending it as an art form.
Cocaine Faggot:
I’m not saying that it should be an Olympic event. I’m just saying it’s complicated, very involved.
Voice:
I press for reasons and he returns to the chorus.
Cocaine Faggot:
It all depends on the bookstore.
Voice:
Peck, peck, a pause and he exhales.
Cocaine Faggot:
First, what kind of bookstore is it? Is it stanky? One of those tired bookstores with exactly thirty-two porno mags from the ‘70’s that look like they were rescued from underneath a 16 year olds’ mattress. They still show 8 millimeter triple X projected onto plywood in filthy small booths. The viewing area is chalked in white and inevitably the actual projection misses the outlined target like a sloppy lover. If it’s that kind of bookstore, I wouldn’t waste my time. No. You want a real bookstore: the latest in magazine and video releases, the newest devices and best selection of sexual paraphernalia. A real bookstore is open 24 hours and more importantly cleanses its viewing areas in those same 24 hours. A real bookstore has professional porn booth sanitation crews who make minimum wage and dream of moving up- possibly food service.
Voice:
He takes another quick jab at the pipe.
Cocaine Faggot:
But even if it is a real bookstore, the decision making process is just the beginning. Here, let’s pretend I’m entering a bookstore for the first time.
Voice:
I wonder if I could stop him.
Cocaine Faggot:
I come in, pay the dollar browsing fee (yes, just to look!), and in most places you have to buy at least two dollars worth of tokens to go to the viewing area. And that’s your first question: where is the viewing area? Is it out of sight of the entrance and cashier?
Voice:
He is being rhetorical but I trip him with a ‘Yes’.
Cocaine Faggot:
Well, yes, OK, um hopefully it is yes, that will make your job easier. See, I’m trying to answer the big question. Is it cool to cruise at this particular bookstore?
Voice:
He pauses again, being a smartass, waiting for me to answer this question. When I don’t bite, he sneaks a peck, continues.
Cocaine Faggot:
Now every bookstore is going to have signs which say no cruising and huge placards outside booths reminding you One Person Per Booth. Most even have video cameras. And all of them will have absurd warnings not to secrete bodily fluids inside the booths as if fear of fines or prosecution could stop people from cumming. So the signs don’t mean shit. Really, it all falls on the store personnel, which means it all depends on the bookstore and who is working. Assholes are the people who won’t let you cruise and they come in two categories.
Voice:
I had an urge to take notes, but was somehow confident he would soon be distributing handouts.
Cocaine Faggot:
There’s the angry homophobe guy who makes his presence known clearly upon entrance. It is amazing how much hatred someone can relay in handing a person tokens. This kind of asshole is obvious but a big frown on the parade. Then there’s the anal, I’m gay but I’m on the job and If I can’t have any fun neither can you, asshole. He’s immediately in your business and openly disapproving looking down his nose like you know sex with him involves lots of Kleenex. His disgust, for some reason, makes me the angriest. But whatever, it’s another no-can-do might as well go home for solo gymnastics deal.
Voice:
Even with a pipe and lighter in either hand he manages the agility to produce vulgar gestures.
Cocaine Faggot:
But don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of cool store people who adopt the military ‘we don’t look, you don’t run naked through the store’ attitude. That’s why it’s convenient to have the viewing area out of sight of the attendants- it aides the ambivalence. Anyway, OK, we have determined that the bookstore is cruiser friendly, now we can begin.
Voice:
We’re just starting?
Cocaine Faggot:
Right, the beginning. I told you it was complicated. I could write a book.
Voice:
You mean you haven’t?
Cocaine Faggot:
You’re funny. Listen, you’re the one who asked me…
Voice:
I know, I know. Please continue. I must know what conundrums next befall our heroes is their quest for anonymous sex in our cities finest adult bookstores.
Cocaine Faggot:
Did I say you were funny? I meant stupid. But let me explain cruising in a way your heterosexuality can comprehend.
Voice:
He was often defensive and prone to getting worked up.
Cocaine Faggot:
It’s like the single bar scene only condensed. What takes you guys several hours, takes us ten minutes. It’s like a sex dehydrator. It’s physical, all assumptions. It’s talking in monosyllables. ‘Do you like that?’, ‘No, please stop.’ But that’s the best case scenario because, here Opie you can relate to this, cruising is a lot like fishing. It’s mostly about waiting. You might get some bites. You might land a fish. You’ll probably throw it back. Sometimes you might reel in a catch. Sometimes it’s worthy of Polaroid’s- but not often. Mostly you wait. Mostly you look at the ground, your watch, the ceiling, your feet and reluctantly spend your tokens. Mostly you wait for the buzz to sign off.
Voice:
I couldn’t resist. ‘You do this for fun?’
Cocaine Faggot:
I do it for sex. Although I could certainly understand why you prefer waiting for the pleasures of hooking a large gilled creature, who by the way never threatened you, but whatever. You wanted illustrations of why cruising is difficult, I’m complying.
Voice:
I don’t even like fishing.
Cocaine Faggot:
And football makes you faint, no straight-boy pandering. Back to the question. Cruising is complicated because, well it all depends...
Voice:
He paused to peck at the pipe and encouraged me to finish his sentence. ‘It all depends...on the bookstore.’ I was a quick study. He exhaled his confirmation.
Cocaine Faggot:
Right. See, there are three cruising scenarios in a real cruiser friendly bookstore.
Voice:
Aha, I thought. Here comes the ditto. But, no.
Cocaine Faggot:
Three cruising scenarios. First, if the atmosphere demands a little discretion and you can’t openly cruise outside the booths, the option involves sitting in a booth and waiting for someone to open and enter your unlocked door. Bad idea. You have basically three seconds to decide whether to let this could always be a Jeffrey Dahmer into your very cramped, poorly lit, almost coffin-like masturbation chamber. No control, no go! That’s my policy. Anyway, if as we discussed open cruising is tolerated then you have the second scenario. Everyone stands in the hallway outside the booths looking like a line of boys waiting to be asked to dance at a girl’s choice junior high gig. Everyone finds things to look at. Imaginary threads, loose laces. The heterosexual porn posters poorly hanging on the walls. Everything is eye contact. Two guys look each other over but pretend not to. If either one likes. then either one stops pretending not to look. Consent and confirmation are accomplished in a glance. One consenting adult goes into a booth and leaves the door unlocked. The other consenting adult sneaks in like a thief. This is appropriate since soon fluids will be secreted and these acts will undoubtedly go unprosecuted. Because face it, what kind of detectives want to collect the crime samples?
Voice:
I didn’t answer the question, but instead asked my own. ‘It seems frustrating at most, but is it difficult? It seems, like you said, like fishing which is not a difficult sport.’
Cocaine Faggot:
Sure. But when you fish, the fish don’t have the ability to reject you. Very little self-worth is on the line. And you don’t have to blow the fish.
Voice:
He doesn’t even wait for the cymbal rift.
Cocaine Faggot:
And when you land a fish it’s pretty obvious whether it’s a keeper right away, even before you get it into the boat. But even with second scenario cruising you don’t know what you got until you get into the booth. And you may be surprised at what can be illuminated. Anything is possible then. He’s a no dick, or limp jalapeno dick motherfucker. He wants to lick your toes. He recites passages of Oscar Wilde while pinching your nipples so painfully you are certain he was never breast fed, by a human.
Voice:
I wanted to suggest that I thought he might like that, but he was on a roll. He hadn’t hit the bowl in minutes.
Cocaine Faggot:
And if your worst nightmare scenarios do not unfold, well then you still have to negotiate sex. I tell you it’s complicated. Who wants what? Who likes what? Who does what? How far does it go? How long does it last? How safe must it be? Any wrong answers to any of these questions and it’s a DIVORCE. Suddenly you face the embarrassment of saying ‘Look, I’m sorry. I know I committed to coming into this sex booth with you, but now in the twenty seconds we’ve been together I discovered I can’t stand you. Goodbye’. Sometimes I find it easier to tell the guy I can’t go through with it because he looks too much like my brother. I mean we are talking major issues dealt with in very short time spans when we talk cruising. You don’t think that rates as complicated?
Voice:
He didn’t give me a chance to answer.
Cocaine Faggot:
And I still haven’t discussed the third cruising scenario: holes.
Voice:
Holes?
Cocaine Faggot:
Holes, yes, glory holes in the booths are the best cruise situation. They provide the maximum in cruising comfort. Booths featuring either peep size holes for voyeuristic and inspection functions or the deluxe glory holes for actual faceless member exchanges, are ultra-modern conveniences that not only eliminate the fears of commitment and personal safety but also allows limited intimacy and unlimited cruising in the privacy of your own daily cleansed porn booth.
Voice:
You never knew when he would stop.
Cocaine Faggot:
Four out of five closet homos prefer holes, you know. If there were a referendum to require holes in all adult book store booths, I would vote for it. Well, I wouldn’t vote for it, but I would secretly support it and convince my heterosexual friends to vote for it.
Voice:
You never knew how far he would go.
Cocaine Faggot:
Actually the whole idea of Holes was invented by priests looking for new uses for confessionals.
Voice:
He finally cracked, buckled by his own amusements, then became silent just as quickly.
Cocaine Faggot:
Seriously, I do appreciate holes. They certainly have saved me more than any preacher.
Voice:
We were getting serious? Wait a minute. ‘What’s this? The lost sermons of Saint A Sissy?’ He would not be riled.
Cocaine Faggot:
I’m talking in context of the question, the difficulty of cruising. Holes are good. They can prevent weird, sometimes horrible situations.
Voice:
His generalities were becoming inadequate. ‘Like what?’
Cocaine Faggot:
What? You want a for instance? You want a story?
Voice:
Sure. Give me some details, some specific weird situation. An anecdote, you know, if you can think of one.”
He needed no more encouragement.
Cocaine Faggot:
It’s a holeless, but cruiser friendly bookstore. Understand. Don’t want the homo lingo to throw you. OK. I’m there. A very attractive fish comes down stream, we have mutual gill flapation, do the eye dance and I follow him into a booth. Wahlah! I depant to meaty knee level, he fondles very approvingly. All is going well, but I start to become anxious to view his own contribution to the encounter. However, when I press for penis viewing privileges he, this guy, goes stern. He stiffens and tells me he had been in the gulf war and well...that was it. He left it to my imagination. But not for too long, because then he added: ‘So, I suppose that means you don’t want to finish now? I supposed your grossed out?’. Well, frankly, yeah, I was. And I don’t have to tell you how that affects a hard on, especially when it’s still in his hands. But I was stuck. What could I do? He was a war vet for Christ sake. So...I concentrated really hard and masturbated as embarrassed as if my mother were watching. I came meekly in a diluted toothpaste drool.
Voice:
He often got more specific than I desired. Still, I assured him that he certainly had proved his point. Cruising was complicated. There was some silence, he reacquainted himself with the pipe and then for the first time since I had been there he offered me a hit. I accepted. As I drew on the pipe he didn’t speak at all. It wasn’t until several bowl exchanges later that he spoke again. By then his thoughts had drifted. I fancied that I could see his next thesis forming behind the shine of his eyes. The weed was that good.
blackout
Scene 6: Sum
Lights up on the Cocaine Faggot in the chair with a laptop on the table. He is typing furiously.
Cocaine Faggot:
You are not as pathetic as this- searching for an errant coke niblet betwixt the lobes of your gelatinous belly flab. No, you are not that sum.
Calculate this for one-
You have just finished writing an unusually lengthy email response to your mother and father. They had forwarded you two E’s from the obviously inexhaustible supply of E’s they have seemingly, in a very suspect evaluation process, deemed forwardable. The first was a link to a site where you could discover if the FBI had a file on you. Caught up in the intrigue of the idea you followed the link and began the search process without taking a moment to ponder the reason your parents might send you a link to a site where you could see your FBI file. It wasn’t until you entered the final data and pressed enter that you even began to consider the probability that your parents, fully knowledgeable of your social security number, your birth date and your mother’s maiden name, had already looked up and in all likelihood committed to memory the details of your FBI file. Just as the paralysis began to take, the file you requested appeared listing nominal information and your picture: a big fat hairy ape. Under the picture there was a caption explaining, in case you were once lobotomized or had a thimbleful of taste, that the picture and file were a joke and that the picture of the ape was not intended to imply any racial aspersions. Your breathing was under control again, but you blushed red at the thought of your parents ‘getting you.’
The second forwarded E originated from the gentleman whose E’s your parents most frequently, and sometimes almost exclusively, found worthy of forwardability. He was an elderly-ex-military-reverend-nothing-or-other who without a doubt was the Michael Jordan of forwarding. Your parents had been sending you his E’s for a long time in what you were sure they viewed as friendly ribbing of your liberal ways. The first few were amusing, certainly your parents were joking. The forwards were usually bad Clinton jokes, or Clinton conspiracy theories or poorly disguised pushes to bring back the ‘good old days.’
Sure they were harmless, but could your parents really agree with them. That they might, made you start responding, sometimes quite aggressively, to the forwards pointing out in detail to your parents why each piece of trash they forwarded you was completely wrong and unsurprisingly indicative of the racist, sexist homophobic Republican lying machine. This strategy had no effect. Your parents dismissed the rants with ‘we don’t really discuss politics’ and ‘we don’t see why you get so worked up’ typed nakedly above their latest forwards. So you asked them to stop forwarding this lunatic’s forwards and in that cute old people way they completely and blatantly ignored you. So you went to the source and fired off a stingingly worded and quite virulent E to his Airness of the web. You belittled his views, his person, his dog and took offense that he had forwarded this racist, sexist homophobic propaganda to your poor easily duped parents. You of course cc’d your parents confident that this audacious breach of internet protocol, arrogance and downright unhumaness would convince them to stop forwarding the lunatic’s E’s. To this day your parents still have never acknowledged receiving this E or receiving a response from the aforementioned lunatic. You did, however, receive a response. Not from the lunatic, but from the lunatic’s wife who came at you like Whitney Houston after being told Bobby’s been bad. Still, for all her indignation, self-righteousness and Whitney rage, the lunatic’s wife was right when she said you did not know her husband, that your parents could take care of themselves and that your personal attacks on her husband, a happily married pastor and decorated military man, undermined your very position of tolerance. You wanted to write back and tell her she was right but even before you could put down your pipe and place your fingers on the keyboard you thought, yes she was right about the personal attacks but that doesn’t change the fact that her husband sends this right wing crap to your parents who then forward it onto you which quite specifically bums you out. So, you didn’t respond. You allowed a human being to keep on hating you. That’s so unlike you. Anyways the forwards never stopped and here today preceded by the FBI ape sting was a spanking fresh forwarded E from the MJ internet head himself. You felt ripe and perhaps yes even giddy imagining the heat of your imminent rage. You clicked the E open like a snap on a woman’s bra and immediately felt guilty for the misogynous metaphor. You read the subject line “Did God Make You?” Oh boy, this was going to be good. You devoured the text- it was a story- a young girl asks an old man if God made her and he says yes, and she asks if God made him and he says yes, and then she says well he must be getting better at it. The sound approximating something in the laugh genus that emitted from you was not forced or drug enabled. It was cute- just like the forwarded E story, Shirley temple cute. Sure the story mentioned a god but it wasn’t specific and didn’t seem outwardly indoctrinating or proselytizing.
Shitwilligers. That was toche’ un dos. Your parents had gotten you twice in a matter of moments. You had no choice but to be the humble and loving son you are. You wrote a lengthy response to your mother and father’s forwarded E.
You told them they had got you- that they had found a critic-proof forwardable E, a truly harmless trifle immune to your scorn. Congratulations you typed to them. Then you gave them the updates. You filled in the equation. Job going well, check. Theater company doing well, check. Still not getting paid for theater, check. Still no girlfriend, check. And then you gave them the old ‘not rich yet, not famous yet, but your God willing (cuz yours wouldn’t stand for it) maybe one day you will achieve some of the goals they so frequently ridicule’ speech. And follow that witticism with a ha ha and some annoying cyber-shorthand mark. Wahlah!
​
There. You were finished. You had written a response to a forwarded E from your parents thus proving that you are not pathetic. The knowledge imparted in that correspondence demonstrates how busy and relatively successful your life was and is. When you figure in these aspects of your life you know you are more than just some moments, more than just some of your characteristics. So you’re a pothead, you like to trip once a week and when you watch Survivor you do some blow. So what if you are a half closeted reluctant gay man who has never had a lover and works out his libido in the booths of adult book stores. You’re still a good person. You wrote a lengthy response to your parent’s forwarded E for Pete’s sake.
And even if all this living one night finds you bisecting your fury belly beef in the hunt for an awol snowflake, even if the snowflake’s discovery gives lift to an unfathomable joy that rises in you bringing warmth and an unstoppable reflexive shit eating grin to your increasingly blushing face, and even if that high coupled with your fanatical anticipation of the next Survivor suddenly makes you think dammit it can’t get better than this, and even if after a few minutes you realize how idiotic you last declaration was and you say to yourself ‘damn I’m pathetic’- even if all that happens, even if sometimes you find yourself numbingly all too in that place- you are not that sum.
blackout
Scene 7: Cocaine Faggot Redux
Lights up on the Cocaine Faggot as he enters and performs the actions as dictated by the Voice.
Cocaine Faggot:
I’m gonna regret this. I’m not going to do it
Voice:
he says on the wavy way home. This time he’s talking about the temptation folded into a money order receipt in the deep crevice of his wallet- the little bag with the big red lips and white dream. He is certain he is not going to do it. It’s late, he’s had enough. He’s smoked all his pot so he already has to get up early to score before work.
Cocaine Faggot:
Don’t do it. Go home, be obsessed with some project for too long and go to bed. Don’t finish it. Save it for tomorrow. Yes, those two sparkling lines tomorrow will be...just enough to make you want more. No, that can’t happen. To save yourself you must do the joy tonight. Quickly. Then obsess. Then go to bed. Yes. You deserve it. You worked hard today and that’s not a lie, and it’s not like you need it-
Voice:
now that’s a lie.
Cocaine Faggot:
Oh fuck.
Voice:
What is he doing. He’s gotten himself tangled.
Cocaine Faggot:
God dammit.
Voice:
He’ll get out soon. Another good reason to finish tonight because,
Cocaine Faggot:
Yes, this is the last time. You don’t need this to write. You don’t need this to have fun. CAST ASIDE YE DEMONS.
Voice:
And he does the remnants of the micro baggie before another rationalization comes to mind.
Cocaine Faggot:
Yes. That was the answer.
Voice:
He’s happy about the decision. It’s gone. He can go to bed. Well, not really. He needs something. Let’s see, he’s high what other gratification does he need?
Cocaine Faggot:
Sex. Oh yes, sex. That would be great. Ohhh, but it’s late- that involves driving, but you have extra tokens. Well, you still have to buy tokens to get in anyway. It’ll still cost you three bucks.
Voice:
He looks at the pile of tokens and thinks he can measure his sex life in the number of tokens he has left over. The bigger the pile, the better. That means he got lucky early.
Cocaine Faggot:
I’m gonna regret this. I’m not going to do it.
Voice:
This time he’s referring to going to the adult bookstore. It’s Monday at midnight. Only gross fucks could possibly be there he thinks. He’ll never get laid. It’s a drive, but boy he does want sex, and what’s the alternative?- homo videos and hand dreams. It’s gotten so old. It’s really late.
Cocaine Faggot:
I’m not going to do this,
Voice:
he says as he brushes his bad teeth, takes all drugs off his possession (but loads a bowl for the road), a couple of drinks of Kesslers chased by classic coke and the keys are in his hand.
It’s late. There probably won’t be anyone there. Just the usual old men, fat men, oh-way-to-queer men and the number one rider of the bookstore carousel- the pituitary cases: giants, dwarves and the otherwise deformed. Those who can’t go to bars, he supposes. But hardly ever is there what he wants- straight acting, good looking, well hung closet men with a naive innocent quality mixed with a keen intelligence and an uncanny knowledge of pop culture. Those men, he thinks, hardly ever go to bookstores.
Cocaine Faggot:
I’m gonna regret this,
Voice:
he thinks, but the TV goes off a sure sign that he is vacating the house. He’s all ready. Big red lip bag gone. Bowl in hand. Keys. Destination. Horniness.
Cocaine Faggot:
Check.
Voice:
It’s one of the only nights he isn’t busy. It won’t take long. If no one’s there, he’ll leave. You only live once he clings to. What makes you happy is what’s important he believes.
It’s later. Decisions don’t come quickly to him. He is kind of proud of himself that he has so thoroughly thought it out to this point. Not that the equation of sex vs. no sex was ever a hard question for him. But he thinks it’s more a question of sex or self sex, of living large or being a wussy, being true or being responsible. But soon it’s just simply a question of living or giving up, and he was high dammit so he was gonna live. He felt good and knows that feeling will continue for at least a half hour when the world and his buzz would nosedive making him feel guilty and reflective.
Cocaine Faggot:
So, to spend the next half hour living
Voice:
which he interprets as cruising an adult bookstore for anonymous sex
Cocaine Faggot:
or giving up
Voice:
which he interprets as masturbating to 1970 homoerotic videos.
Cocaine Faggot:
I’m gonna regret this. I’m not going to do it,
Voice:
he says as he walks to the door.
He doesn’t know what stopped him. Only knows the lock never turned. The door never opened, and then he had the clicker in his hand and was searching for videos and cum rags. He felt good. He felt like it was a step in the right direction. He feels if all the steps are this easy, he’ll climb a flight or two. Hell, if all the steps are this easy, he’ll tackle the whole goddamned staircase.
blackout
Scene 8: Acceptance
Lights up on the Cocaine Faggot in the chair with a laptop on the table.
Cocaine Faggot:
​
I finally found him on Facebook, older of course. Balding, even at eighteen I could see that coming. His wife Rose with what must be their daughter crowding the profile picture. The only picture on his page, sharing the lonely space with just two posts dated seven months apart.
I sent a message anyway
It's been thirty years since I watched the boy I loved marry the girl he loved. Thirty years since I played the role
of the worst best man ever. Three decades of infaguation- of falling for the straight guy.
Roger was the first. Leaning on the door, blonde, angular, eye glued to a peep hole, wearing just a T-shirt and bikini briefs, his hand periodically brushing his groin as he periodically tells me how hot he thinks our chaperone is. It is one am on a Friday night; the first day of JAMCO. Our three roommates sleeping breaths are the only other sounds in the hotel room.
He is into older women he whispers, looking again through the peep hole hoping to glimpse our 35 year old chaperone returning to her room directly across from ours. I met Roger just hours before when the Battle Creek chapter of Junior Achievement picked up the Bellevue chapter of Junior Achievement on the way to Lansing Michigan for our regional conference.
And it was love at first lust. After a day of seminars, workshops and JA jeopardy we returned to our assigned rooms, while the others slept Roger held vigil at the peephole, and I held vigil at Roger- the light from the open bathroom door caressing what my hands wished they could.
I would spend the next six months, replaying that night in my mind. Honestly, I still find myself sometimes replaying that night in my mind. And just when the memory was beginning to fade, I saw him again. He was in the line for registration at Kellogg Community College. I was a peer advisor so I walked up to him and advised him that I should be his best friend, and it worked. He didn't last long at KCC but we remained best friends and for the next three years I basked in, fawned over, orbited around Roger- like he was my gravity- like I needed him to breathe.
Roger loved to talk about cars and girls and I loved watching Roger talk about cars and girls. We would map the back roads of our respective home towns in his canary yellow Camaro breaking speed limits, smoking joints
and tipping back forties. When he took a job at a bakery making donuts on the midnight shift, I would hang like a shadow in the back lot shooting the shit with Roger through the screen door. He was so cute in his white uniform
kneading mountains of dough into crullers and bear claws and sometimes if I stayed until the end of his shift
he would invite me inside while he changed and I would snatch glimpses of him collecting them to add to my daydreams.
Roger didn't like hanging with my friends and that was alright with me. The few times he did- a toga party thrown by my old high school class president, Roger wearing nothing but a sheet and his bikini briefs- a weekend at my friend Lisa's parents' summer house the three of us tripping and wrinkling like prunes from hours spent in the lake
Roger rocking a black speedo- it was awkward. Mostly it was just us until it wasn't. Until it was Roger and Rose
and me, until it was them and me, and then just them- the third wheel rolling away to Eastern Michigan University.
One of the last times I spent with them was as the best man at their courthouse wedding or maybe I was just a witness I'm not sure. I remember being very happy for them. And then I was gone and I didn't look back
until 20 years later, ten years after being drug free, now in my mid-forties.
I finally found him on Facebook. I sent the message anyway, and three months later I got a reply with a phone number. We played phone tag for awhile and when we did speak it was awkward. I asked about Rose and their child I had seen in the profile picture, he asked me in kind ‘so you married divorced or what’. I said or what and admitted I was gay. Roger shrugged it off, changed the subject and made a vague request for me to visit them
next time I came to Michigan. I made a vague commitment to do just that.
We haven't spoken since.
​
Can you feel the pain of the loss of a love you never had?
Yes, Yes you can.
The Cocaine Faggot closes his laptop and stands addressing the audience.
Today I was a bad gay and a good gay in a way. I did do something very gay, which is good, but I felt uncomfortable doing it, which is bad. I went to a cabaret old chum pa dump bum. My friend April's one woman show chronicling her journey from self-professed musical theater slut to almost musical theater star to baby mama to single mother and back full circle to her current triumphant return to the stage. Albeit the extremely tiny stage of the Duplex Cabaret and Piano Bar on the corner of Christopher and 7th avenue, a literal stone’s throw from the infamous Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of the gay rights movement, and a block away from Gay street (the streets name not its sexual preference). No escaping it, I was going to have what the Flintstones promised me before every show- a gay old time.
Determined to not let my fellow fruits down I started the evening on the right rainbow track. I exercised- real gays love exercising. And to up my Gay Credibility Quotient even more I selected Adam Lambert's Trespassing album as my workout soundtrack- tre’ gay. It was an ambitious beginning, but short lived. My GCQ took a sharp nosedive the second I got dressed. I choose to wear corduroys, a vintage Pepsi employee shirt with my name over the pocket and my aqua-man hoody. Gay, yes- but not in the right way. Which was immediately apparent when I entered the bar. Well, not immediately as it was one of those maze bars. I entered, turned left, went up some stairs to the first bar area, moved thru that bar to the back where I went up more stairs to a second bar area, moved thru that bar to the back and went down a final set of steps into the space.
​
The theater was two thirds the size of a New York subway car. Barely enough for a small stage, a tiny piano, a mike stand and ten tall cocktail tables with five stools each- like putting fifty flamboyant mice into two thirds of a shoebox. Most of the seats were filled with young gay men in muscle shirts and skinny jeans. The rest were taken by older well-dressed dandies and their attending fag-hags all drinking wine. And then there was me drinking Wilson's whiskey from the bottle with a sugar free red bull chaser muscle-shirtless skinny-jean-less, dandy-less and fag-hag-less.
I was a bad gay and not just today.
I have always been uncomfortable around large groups of gay men I always feel like I am letting my sexual preference down- that my tastes are just not fabulous! enough- that I am a bad gay.
I don't know why I turned out to be a gay heterophile, why my closest friends have always been straight, why I prefer straight bars to gay ones, why I only seem to fall for straight guys, or why I hate Glee. But I do, I really really do.
That doesn't mean I don't enjoy a beautiful diva with a divine voice saanging the H E double hockey sticks out of some killer tunage and when April ended her show skipping down the aisle singing: 'I'm coming out’ I was grinning from ear to ear waving my arms and singing right along with her, like every other gay man in the joint. A good gay
Today.
At last.
blackout
end of play