Chapter 5:
--“Are you alright?” Mark asks me again.
“I’m just sick—I’m not sure why…” I cut myself off. I wanted to add something about ‘ruining my whole life’ but it was too melodramatic and not really true and emotional outbursts would just make the afternoon worse. And also I
wassick—painfully so. Mark goes on drinking his coffee and espresso and odd looking Danish and I pretend to be listening to the black guy trying to push homeless magazines by flirting with everyone who walks by.
We decide to get off at Downtown Crossing because ultimately I’m one of those people who (as Mark will later tell me during a fight the following week) who tries to experience
thingsregardless of whether or not those things are a positive or negative experience. The sky was beginning to turn lavender, so we had about two hours until it was dark. Coming up from the subway, Downtown Crossing was swarming with people.
--“It feels like I’m back in Europe!” Mark shouts gleefully.
I stare at him. “How do you mean?”
--It’s like, the cobbled streets and the outdoor markets…” He started spouting off some German word for pedestrian zone which I couldn’t pronounce. He was right though—downtown crossing does look like Europe—small and winding brick streets all pool into one main square. The sun was setting and so the entire area was covered in blue shadow and the neon signs were just beginning to pick up their brilliancy.
I bring Mark to Filene’s Basement, but as I’m darting through people I feel a set of arms around my waist as I’m lifted off of my feet.
--“I’m sorry baby baby…” Mark buries his face in my hair as he picks me up and rocks me from side to side.
--“Whaaa…” I am in every sense in disarray.
--“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well.” He places me down on the ground.
--“Oh,” I kiss his cheek. “I’ll be ok.” And I was won over for a while, because really and truly I love nothing in the world so much as being touched by him.
Filene’s Basement is an innocuous looking edifice: we come in through the front and push our way through the colognes and the handbags that fil the whole place up with the smell of leather and sandalwood. But then, there is an escalator down, and you pass under signs hanging from the ceiling, signs which speak of terrific, unfathomable savings. Whenever Filene’s runs out of space on its main floor, it ships down the unsellables to the basement, where they are tossed into huge vats and dated. The longer its been down there, the cheaper it becomes. Women were digging through large piles of sweaters and running shirts—occasionally one would fall to the floor and be claimed by the dust clouds that haunted the edges of the bins. The ceiling was low and rust stained, and dozens of people jumbled and elbowed through the racks of clothing. Valentino and Kenneth Cole rubbed elbows with hideous Nautica slacks. It was feverish. Mark found dozens of things he couldn’t afford. I didn’t even venture to the spacious women’s section for fear that I might never find my way back to the surface.
Once outside we went to H&M and promptly went out. Too many blonde girls and too few red tags meant that it was not for Mark and I, who are not blonde and not wealthy. We go down to Marshall’s, also in a basement, and my phone rings. I abandon Mark and return to the surface to see who is calling me. It is Russ. I am confused.
--“Russ, I am still in Boston,” I tell him, leaning against a large glass display window. A crazy homeless man is pacing back and forth next to me talking on his imaginary cell phone.
--“I know. I just wanted to see how you’ve been.”
Russ has never cared how I’ve been. That is part of the fun of being in a relationship with him.
--“I’m good. We’re shopping right now. Probably going out clubbing later.”
Awkward pause.
--“So how was “The Passion?” I offer.
--“Oh fantastic, fantastic. We’ve got to go when you get back.”
--“Definitely.”
--“Well, I’ve got to go to chapter now. I hope you have fun. Give me a call when you’re back.”
--Ok Russ, I will.”
We hit some more stores: sports stores, shoe stores. We head into Chinatown, which is smaller than the one in Chicago but with the addition of the same small, overly crowded trinket shops. Mark got grabbed by a homeless man wanting money. We saw a theater playing “Nixon in China” The sky was pink and it was becoming very cold. We found a shortcut back to the hotel.
I crawled into bed and watched “Everybody loves Raymond” while Mark ate cold pizza. I tried to get a coke but every single coke machine had the dollar bill reader ripped out of it, so I had to scrape together a bunch of dimes. As I lie in bed after popping something like 10 Alieve, Mark reads philosophy. We watch “Phonebooth” together—kind of clichéd, kind of lame, but totally enthralling. Around 9ish we get up and head out to Manray.
My head still hurts and I don’t want to go, and Mark sits with his shoulders pointing away from me on the T. I sigh and pretend that I’m by myself, or that I’m babysitting. It’s so much easier than accepting the real alternative.
Manray didn’t open until 10, so we went around the corner to Burger King. Although I ordered a drink, I was given a number to wait in line for 10 minutes for some employee to hand me an empty cup, which didn’t do anything to improve my mood, which by that time with the headache, the semi-hostile body language, the fatigue, and the general incompetence of those around me was sinking into dire straights. We sat in a booth and talked about friends from high school. I mentioned Sanida Kikic, whom I hadn’t thought about for years. She was from Bosnia, and we were inseparable when we were 13, and then she realized that boys didn’t like me and I wasn’t cool, so she wrote me a letter about how she hated my dirty fingernails and never wanted to talk to me again. I still like her, though. She was quirky and too skinny and an amazing tennis player—I think she’s on scholarship right now.
--“You always know all of these extraordinary people who went on to do these extraordinary things.” Mark said.
--“Yeah, I guess I do.”
After a $5 cover, we walked into Manray’s. It was a lush, very dark and atmospheric goth club. As you walk in the narrow, black-painted corridor, to your left is an entrance way that leads to a common area. There walls are red with some paintings here and there, the carpet is black, and there are dark wood thrones set up in the middle and along the walls of the room. There’s a pool table towards the back. To the right there is what will become the disco room—a mirror ball, a flat plastic dance floor with a wooden podium in the middle, mirrored walls, and rails in which to watch the dancers. Along the back of the room is a bar with glowing blue light. We are told by the bouncer that coat check is mandatory, so we go further down the corridor, past the rooms, past a small three person bar in the corner, down a set of stairs into a blacklit basement whose purple glow brought out the murals on the wall.
--“Manditory coat check?” I said as I handed my coat over the bar.
He rolled his eyes as he turned around. “Yeeeeeeees.”
--“And why is that?”
--“It’s the law.” He phrased it in such a way that I was anticipating him to add a “duh” to the end of it. I wasn’t letting him off the hook.
--“Well why is it the law. It isn’t the law in Chicago.”
Realizing I wasn’t going to be blown off, he finally looked me in the face. “It’s been the law around here ever since that club fire where all those people died.”
I was confused. Then Mark burst out gleefully, “You mean the
Great White show?”
His looks darkening, the coat check guy grumbled, “Yeah, the Great White show.” So we laughed and laughed all the way upstairs.
The room we went into was the third room in the club. There were three bars—the small corner bar next to the stairs, the medium size, “surround sound” bar in the middle with stools on all sides, and the large bar with the paltry alcohol selection against the left wall mural. Around the ceiling were various video monitors that displayed all sorts of 80’s videos. There were a few battered looking couches set up around the dance floor, which was flanked by three raised platforms: two elevated dance stages and one elevated dance cage. The walls were covered in these disturbing red and yellow tinged murals that somehow managed to have naked women angels on them, which I rolled my eyes at. Men are desperately obvious—no subtly at all.
I ordered a coke off the old, black haired witch of a bartender. She ignored Mark for so long he blew her off and gave his money to the bartender in the middle of the room. He settled up beside me and I leaned as far away from him as possible. If he was going to act like he had never touched me before, great, fine, I would be sitting here trying to look single and trying to get a pretty goth boy to ask me for a drink. As we surveyed the bar, it appeared that we had made a terrible mistake. There clientele was goth, no doubt about it—couples were dressed in tight leather, with heavy eye makeup, lace-up shirts, zippers, and S&M vests, but most of the groups were groups of men with one or two cubby, overweight girls. And the groups of three or four men were touching each other and holding each other around the waist. Then a very attractive black woman goes by in a cop hat and a catholic schoolgirl skirt. I realize looking more closely, that it’s a man. Same thing for the woman in the 4 inch heels and the strapless black dress: a man. So Manray is a goth club on Monday’s and Fridays. It’s an “alternative culture” club on Saturday. Which means that Mark had a chance to study for his human sexuality midterm on transsexuals and I got to reveal in a genderless environment. Still, not what we had expected.
Since we were in the “eightes night” room there was a lot of bad eighties music and a lot of bad “white people dancing.” Mark got offended at my insinuation that white people are not good dancers, but it was true. There is a type of dancing in which white people who have little musicality use as their default step—it involves bending the waist from side to side, stepping back and forth, and having the arms rigid and bent at the elbows, raised in the air. It’s embarrassing for everyone involved. Then two incredibly thin men get up on the dancing platform and take off their shirts. They looks as though they were greek sculptures painted the color of flesh. As they start to move their bodies like snakes, and I started wishing I could somehow solicit a lap dance, I leaned over to Mark.
--That’s good white people dancing,” I said.
We watch some of the pretty gothy mods as the club fills up. I head down into the basement to use the restroom. As I head into the bathroom by the coat check, I see a man, so I quickly duck out and go over to the next one. As I go in, there is a mixture of men and women chatting and putting on makeup. There are signs on the outside of the toilet that read “One person per stall at a time please.” I felt very disappointed in myself that I thought the experience of a coed bathroom was a little bit odd. Who the frick cares?
I go back upstairs and Mark is looking amazingly sexy propped up against the bar with his eyeliner. It makes me more upset, so I walk past him and return to my position.
--“Come over here and sit by me,” he ordered.
And of course I was better. That’s all it takes, that’s all I want. I think that everyone wants to be irresistible, wants to be that person that the opposite sex loses some amount of self control for. I know that I will never ever be sexy enough to be that girl. But never touching me, never initiating a kiss goodnight or a stroke of the arm—those things remind me of what I am, and they’re excruciating. All I want is to be touched when I’m angry or depressed. And when he does, everything becomes right.
I get yelled at for taking photos of the half naked dancing men. I am angry I have to put the camera away.
After a few hours of cuddling by the bar, we head over into the Disco room to see what’s going on there. Rainbow Delight is standing on the podium in the middle of the room. She is the largest drag queen I have ever seen in real life—she looks like Divine, only with gigantic colorful eyelashes. Her fat belly is tucked into a spandex body suit of florescent green, and she has a large, ostentatious pink wig that stands up at least two feet. Her breasts look like water balloons she’s stuck in the front of her suit—in fact, they very well may have been that. With a hand on her hip, Divine announced the next performer in a husky, smoky voice.
The next thing I know the Hispanic transsexual—the one in the black strapless dress, bounds onstage. She’s wearing a sparkly red outfit and lipsyncing to some horrible dance song very badly. This trannie is obviously very late in her acceptance of her identity, because she had the bone structure and the muscles of a man. She also hadn’t been entirely post op yet, and when she would bend over in her tight red dress I could see the bulge of the penis she had tucked between her legs. The dancing and the performance wasn’t ugly per se, it was just strange—I haven’t spent enough time actually out and about the trannie scene. I love reading about it, and I love talking to trannies (my friend the Flynn has a whole skew of very cute ones she sends me photos of, and I read their weblogs with delicious interest), but I don’t usually see male-to-female ones like this; just a bit too much drag queen for me. As I’m watching her, a small blonde midget comes by with her taller, younger boyfriend.
Back in the eighties room, Mark and I sit on the couch and talk about the dancers. Peaches comes on and the dance floor gets jammed. I want to be the kind of girl who has the guts to get up on a stage and sing “Sucking on my titties like you wanted me…”
Before we headed out for the night, we checked back in on Delight and her ladies. The final girl was a small, incredibly limber Asian trannie. I actually couldn’t believe it was a man—she was so perfect, her face, her body, clearly a post op, perfect breasts, lithe figure. She wore a black vinyl dress with a long, ruffly train and flirted with all the boys in the crowd who were stuffing dollar bills into her corset at an alarming rate. Delight looked a little bit jealous.
We took a taxi home when the club closed at 2.
