TIMES SQUARE, 1950
(Wouldn't it be nice if Times Square looked like this today?)
In exactly one month, I'll be celebrating 14 years in New York. When I arrived, totally green, I expected life to be like the gals' in How to Marry a Millionaire. Instead, I found myself in a sixth-floor walk-up in a filthy building on the outskirts of Chelsea. The Russian landlady owned about 83 cats, so the hallways smelled like cat pee all the time; the month after I moved in, someone got knifed on the front stoop. For the year that I lived there, I tried as often as possible to appeal to my friends' good graces in order to use their showers -- my own was one crumbling tile away from condemnation.
In some ways, though, I miss those days; being young and naive and green has its advantages. You don't worry about a whole lot. Your optimism for the future is boundless. (You also get laid a lot, but that's another series of stories altogether.) Life was fun, because it was all so new. Discovering men! Discovering brunch! Discovering bars!
The first gay bar I ever ventured into was an absolute dive called The Star Sapphire, underneath the 59th Street Bridge. It catered to a motley clientele of Gaysians, drag queens, hustlers and dirty old men. And moi. I'd love to be able to tell you that its faintly exotic moniker and colorful cast of characters gave it a roguishly decadent, fading glamour reminiscent of 1930's Hong Kong, but really -- it was a dump. My most vivid memory was going to the men's room for the first time, and being really freaked out by a totally naked hustler/crackhead/go-go boy, crouched on the toilet seat, jerking off and offering me a bump of coke. My mother would have been so proud: I just said no.
The Star Sapphire closed down some time in the mid-1990's; I had long since abandoned it for more gentrified gay pleasures. I did Google the old place for cheap sentiment's sake; and the only mention I could find was on a Transgender/Transvestite Message Board where the thread quickly degenerates into a bitchy war of words between a TV and her spurned chaser.
Somehow, it all seems so fitting.
Happy early anniversary. I do believe Art Deco watches are the traditional 14th anniversary gift.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I adore New York! How can one not?
But then I've only ever been a tourist.
When I was young, I had delusions of living there, but that never happened, and it's probably for the best. I'd have never made it.
Why, I do believe that you're correct, Jason!
ReplyDeleteMy cinematic illusions of New York may have been quickly dispelled, but I still love it. New Orleans has always fascinated me, too; one of these days, I'll visit! But I intend to starve myself for a week beforehand, so I can eat my way through your city.