The morning had started with hope for a good job, but that belief was slowly sinking with the sun. Each of the blocks went by without a theater. In despair, it seemed somehow appropriate that these lost souls were stationed here. Each of them must’ve had a day like this when their hopes started strong and erect, but slowly, one by one, all possibilities dwindled until they wound up on a street like this one, watching other girls hanging their sides on fenders like meat on a hook, waiting for a buyer. Seeing this they must’ve figured, “I’ve got nothing else going,” and then joined the others.
Looking northward up Third Avenue, I noticed a guy walking with a pretty blond boy in a sailor’s outfit. Together the pair walked, arm in arm, heading toward the sleazy porn theater half a block up. The entrance of the place was circular and covered with dirty brown shag carpet, a giant orifice. Above it proudly flapped a flag: “The Zeus Theater.”
Quick as a fart came the revelation. This was a theater near Twelfth Street! Even though AIDS was widely known, this was about a year or so before the Post ran headlines like “Grandma Dies of AIDS.” The hysteria was still a ways off. Between the NYU dorms and the pandemic pandemonium, the Zeus Theater had little chance of survival. It was closed down in the late eighties. Instead of taking the view that I’d be exposing myself in a pathogenic porn theater, it looked like just another offbeat job.
So I pondered for a moment with a renewed hope. Could this be the place? And if I did go in and was offered a job, would I take it?
My affections were never inclined beyond females. But this was a job and I was broke. I had dropped out of college just before my graduation. I had no marketable skills, no connections, and no real ambition. After a succession of degrading minimum-wage jobs, I finally might luck into something with a salary, in which I’d most likely be unsupervised.
Checking both ways, just to be sure that no past pillars of my old
Midwestern community were lumbering by, I followed the middle-aged man and his Ganymede inside. They paid and together they romantically squeezed through a single angle of the turnstile. I looked through the dirty bulletproof Plexiglas and saw an elderly olive-skinned lady sitting on a stool.
“Excuse me,” I yelled through four small vertical slits.
“Please turn it,” she interrupted, pointing to the turnstile. “They only turn it once.”
I turned it and yelled back in, “Is Miguel in?”
“A segundo.” She replied in an accent, and then yelled into a cheap intercom.
“You wait here.”
I stepped to one side, turned away from the door and waited. After the turnstile spun a couple of times, I turned to the entrance and watched those coming through. They were mainly businessmen types, family men who didn’t fit my naive idea of what gays looked like. A door finally opened and a very young man with only dark peach fuzz for a moustache introduced himself as Miguel and asked if he could be of any assistance.
“Yes,” I replied, shaking his hand, and in a conspiratorially low voice I explained, “Tanya sent me.”
“Oh, I’ve been waiting for you. Come this way.” He led me around the turnstile and down a narrow hallway in the theater. “So how’s Tanya faring?”
“Fine, fine.” The whole place was darkly lit. Occasionally I would brush shoulders with some passing patron. Finally stopping at the end of the corridor, he opened the door and flipped on a light. His room was a modified closet, the fluorescent bars of light revealed a macramé Yin Yang calendar, a small refrigerator, and a tiny television set.
“One second,” he said, flipping his desk lamp on and turning off the fluorescent flood. He offered me a group of film canisters as a seat. When I sat, he leaned back in his swivel chair and began, “So talk to me.”
I told him my name and gave him Helmsley’s address and then explained that I had theater experience at the Saint Mark’s. About to elaborate on my theater know-how, he interrupted.
“I don’t want a resume.”
“Pardon?”
“I want to know what you’re thinking.”
“About what?” I asked.
“Just about.” And he leaned back further in his swivel chair and set his thin arms on the rest of the chair and threw his head back.
“Well,” I said, leaning forward on the dented canister, “I’ll level with you. I’m in dire straits for a job, and I’m probably not qualified, but I am willing to put a lot of energy into learning, and I guess that’s really what I’m thinking about.”
“Well.” He grinned. “Let me first ease your tension. You’ve got the job. Now, I’d like you to feel unencumbered. Go ahead and shake out your arms and legs.”
He started shaking his arms and legs demonstrating how it was done. I followed him. “Now, tell me how you feel and what you’re aware of.”
This was all very weird. “I feel very happy.”
“Is that precisely how you feel, pleased as opposed to satisfied?”
I thought about it a moment and replied, “Well, I am exceptionally pleased, but as I adjust to the news of being hired—security, authority, responsibility—as this sets in, I taper off into satisfaction.”
“Good, very good. Okay, now I want you to close your eyes and think about this: I was only lying to you. I’m sorry, but you simply don’t have the qualifications. I simply can’t give you the job.” He then paused. I thought about this a moment: punch this guy in the fucking face and get out of here. But then I realized that to him this was one big controlled setting.
“I am unhappy.” This guy wanted me to do some kind of Isadora Duncan
dance, symbolizing and acting out feelings. “I am shrouded in constant shade, waiting for liberation. I am a barnacle forever stuck to the bow of a ship.”
“Good, good.” He nodded approvingly. “Now you’ve got the job again and you know that you have it. But you’ve experienced the knowledge of not having it.”
I paused and didn’t know what to do next. “So?”
“So what does this knowledge offer you? How do you see yourself here?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want to see not anticipation, but action. I want to see you working here tomorrow, right now.”
“You mean you want me to envision myself working here?” I looked over at him and he just watched me. “All right, I can do that.” I closed my eyes and tried to see myself walking through my theater. “Yep, there I am.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m handling the many chores and duties that occur in the course of a given day.” Then opening my eyes, I asked him, “What kind of chores and duties occur in the course of a given day?”
“We’ll go into that later, right now I want you to explore your anxieties.”
“Huh?”
“Look, you don’t realize this, but you are on those dimensions simultaneously. Recollection is just calling forth those moments. Think about it. With any given situation there’s usually a predisposed action.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So when I ask you these questions you don’t have to think. Simply look and tell me what you see.”
“What was the question again?”
“We were talking about your sensations on this matter.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and went under: “I feel an
impediment, I’m not as well trained on this as you…. I feel a certain anxiety over what might happen.” I was running dangerously low on bullshit.
“Have you ever participated in EST?” he asked.
“No.”
“Do you chant?”
“No.”
“Crystals?”
“No.”
“All right, we’ll go into more of that later. You’re lucky we met, I see a lot of headway I could help you with.”
“I’m looking forward to that.” Closing my eyes I suddenly started groaning. “Oh, I’m registering something within.”
“Good, good, what is it?”
“It’s stifling…I see…money….” I was answering like someone hearing voices at a seance. “It’s the stifling question of wage.”
“Yes.” He leaned forward energetically. “Good, go with it.”
“I’m speculating about the whole power structure.”
“Okay, that’s Pentagon; you’re referring to Pentagon,” he explained. Who the hell had mentioned the Pentagon? But I got the picture. This was a West Coast hippie with short hair whose destiny as a Haight Ashbury health food cashier had somehow been derailed and instead he had wound up in this bizarre and forsaken spot. Wherever he is nowadays, a transchanneler and a crystal would certainly be nearby. I was getting sick of his shit: “To hell with the Pentagon!”
“Good, excellent, get rid of all that hostility, but then let’s get back to the issue. Specifically, I’d like to hear what you thought when you saw me for the first time.”
This was going to be easy. He wanted to be flattered. “Well, I felt…an
energy, you know, like a compass needle pointing north.” I then paused a moment and looked enlightened and blurted, “Of course, it all makes sense now.”
“What does?”
“Well, for the past few days, all these auspicious and portentous things kept happening.”
“Really?” he replied eagerly. “Like what?”
“Well, I felt this kind of Buddhistic suspension, as if nothing and everything mattered.”
“Really?”
“I broke up with my old lover.”
“What a sacrifice.”
“And moved out of my old house.”
“Holy Tao!”
“And I was drawn here randomly by an overheard conversation on a subway.”
“What karma!” he hollered, leaping out of his chair and giving me a hug. I softly pushed him back into his chair.
“Well,” I resumed calmness. “When would you like me to begin?”
Taking a deep sigh, he wiped the sweat off his brow. “How would you feel about starting your training tonight, right up until closing?”
I didn’t want to spend the night in this sleazy theater. “Well, I’m feeling a fear, a panic, my heart is palpitating, panting deeply, quickly. But I’m willing…” I faltered as I put my hand over my heart. “I’m willing to give it…a stab.”
“Maybe tonight is a bad idea. In fact, you better get some rest. You know, what you need is some miso and rest.”
He walked me to the door and concluded, “Give me a call tomorrow and we’ll arrange a time.”
“Thank you,” I said, breathing more easily. When he closed the door, the significance hit me. The replaced esteem, especially considering the long decline into hopelessness that had been averted by this eleventh-hour reprieve, the full impact hit me as I dashed excitedly through the dim, nefarious halls head on into some small guy, knocking him flat to the ground.
“I’m so sorry,” I said as I reached down, unintentionally grabbing him around the chest to help him back to homo erectus.
“Hey!” I heard a high-pitched squawk. “Get off, sleazebag!”
I realized that through the shirt I was juggling a set of boobs. Quickly I let go and she fell back to the ground.
“You’re a girl!”
“I’m a woman, manboy!”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m the projectionist,” she replied. “What’s your problem?”
“Oh, sorry,” I replied, flustered. Not knowing what else to say, I nervously said, “How do you do? I’m straight.” And then I bolted out.
I retreated
back across Twelfth and down Broadway intending to return to Helmsley’s with the heartening news. But as I passed by the NYU dormitories, specifically the one that housed Eunice, I thought about that olive man in the white suit. Instant anger and hurt eclipsed the jubilation of the new job. I realized that this was something that had to be resolved. I wondered if they’d be together now.
It was still the lighter side of twilight, so I decided to try to find her. A guard insisted on announcing me, so she was on guard when I got to her door. When the elevator stopped on her floor and the doors slid open, she
was standing there, leaning against her door holding a can of Tab, which she was sucking through a straw. We entered the room.
How could she do that to me? I stood still and stared at that milky, silky soft skin, her shadowless face. At first, I tried to remember and then I tried to forget his filthy hands fumbling over her and then I tried not to imagine what might’ve followed.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked after a patient interval.
“You probably heard I was fired.”
“I heard, but I couldn’t believe it….” She rambled on about what a shit Pepe was, and gave me some cinema updates. It sounded all so innocent; she didn’t realize that I saw her being felt up at the Ritz.
“I missed you dearly,” she soon concluded.
“How much?” I mumbled. I took a single step toward her and she took a couple of steps backwards until she was up against the small pullout sofa.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I know you didn’t go out West to visit the folks.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you at the Ritz the other night with that old guy, letting him kiss you and feel you up.”
“I don’t see how what I do is any business of yours.”
“It is when I spend two months dating you in the cold until I lose sensation in my fingers, and my girlfriend and job.”
“Wait a second. You can’t dump all that on me.”
“You knew what I wanted.”
“And you knew what I wanted.”
“Yeah, to make yourself feel pretty at someone else’s agony. Fuck you.” I slammed the door behind me and left.
When I arrived back at Helmsley’s, I told him that I had the job.
“Good, this can be a double celebration. What are you doing tonight?”
“Nothing, why?”
“Because there’s someone very special I want you to meet tonight.”
“I’d be honored, but to be honest I’m tired, starving, filthy, and broke. Tonight might not be the night of nights.” It was only around six. He suggested that I nap an hour or two, take a shower, and then maybe we would go out, his treat. “It’s important that you meet her tonight.”
Three hours later we were at a local restaurant where Helmsley ordered the most expensive dish in the pasta category.
“A fine meal can alter one’s entire perspective,” Helmsley quipped as I gobbled deeper and deeper into the high-sided plate. I felt like Godzilla as I tore through the many pasta roofs and cheese floors. To do any real damage to that tomato and garlic structure was a gluttonous task. All Helmsley did the entire time was pour from a select bottle of vino and snicker. Eventually, though, he attempted to start a sentence, an opening to something he didn’t seem to know how to close.