by
Alexander Clare
Brian’s penis maintains 30 degrees of pitch as a strobe light polka-dots its pale surface as ‘All That She Wants’ by Ace of Base booms from ‘super woofer’ speakers suspended from the ceiling.
Sipping his drink, Brian approaches an elderly Korean lady at the bar, who, while looking away from Brian, cranks his shaft up and down, maintaining an earnest conversation with a woman to her left.
Robert, drunk since this morning, ignores his spasming cousin and suggests I smash my beer bottle into the bouncer’s face, ‘then walk out’. Where could I walk to? I’ve never been to New Jersey before.
I could head to the shoreline, where they pipe music onto the boardwalk. Inevitably playing would be Carlos Santana, who that sweltering summer serenaded his Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa out of every car window and tenement building from Staten Island to the Bronx.
What I really wanted was to be across the George Washington Bridge, home in Washington Heights, where there’s arcade machines on the gum flecked sidewalks, and where 4ft Sue sells chicken fried rice to hulking hitmen all hours. ‘Yo Sue! They would boom.’ ‘Gotta go Sue!’
Downtown, the gun smoke memory of Sean Combes fleeing a nightclub with his then girlfriend Jennifer made going out essential, and if Jen could break into the music scene inspired by her 6 train commute from Harlem to the Lower East side, so could anyone.
I preferred the A train. Jesus Hopped that, we all agreed, but on the L, street performers would backflip in the silver carriages. Pizza cost six dollars and New York resembled a port, where there were no ships, only new beginnings, and at night you could smell fresh flowers sold in the deli supermarkets.
That night began quietly. Brian showed me his dying vegetable patch, before Michael arrived, an anaemic looking man in the New Jersey Police Department who icily informed us he’d been trying very hard to become a father that morning.
Michael was soon joined by another officer, Josh, an athletic six-footer with teenage stubble given to whooping to signal excitement or if he had run out of something to say.
It’s Labor Day weekend and Josh is to be married. His fiancé doesn’t want him to have a stag do, but the tradition is unstoppable, and so is Josh. Whoop. This, I suspected, was the boy at school suspended for bullying, now outranking everybody, and tonight we belong to him.
The third off-duty NJPD poster child was Raaj, obese and sly.
“You know what I like more than anything?” Raaj announces. “Taking a shit. And having a wank.”
“How often do you do that?” Michael asks.
“Twice if I’m lucky”
Whoop.
It was an act of kindness. Brian knew I would be alone that weekend. The British intern, new in town, but what better way to spend Labor Day than at a party with his cousin and the cops? As my new boss, Brian was often protective, proudly announcing his mistakes (and claiming many of mine) to our Park Avenue superiors, women in their 30s, managing six figure accounts for alcohol and shampoo brands and a Hollywood studio.
These women did everything perfectly. If you ordered a taxi, it must appear within a second of them clearing the elevator. If they did yoga, it only happened at the office, at 8am. If they had an omelette, it must be an egg white, served on a seeded bagel precisely sliced down the middle. They dated secret service agents, lived in Westchester, and worked without fail.
But not Brian, a hoodlum from Atlantic City, who would tire by lunchtime, barking orders in a breathy voice underpinned by fear. “Alex if you see me getting a blowjob on Labor Day,” he huffed, “Don’t tell anyone.” I agreed, and my invite was secure.
That night exists in flashbacks:
In the back of a van with Josh looking at me, screaming “Let’s go Alex let’s go, whoop!”
A basement barroom with a grey carpet where ‘Turner’ and ‘Tina’ perform lap dances. You can touch Tina’s breasts but not squeeze them, as ‘they might pop’, but the real money, Tina tells me, is in Las Vegas, and not with her breasts, but with her ‘butt-quake.’
Michael gazing up at Turner with intense fury, as she lap-dances for him, flexing his belt then whipsnapping it, then staring at Turner again like a troubled schoolmaster. Brian tells him to cool it.
“What the fuck?” Roars Josh. “I’m the one getting married. Both girls, on me. Tina. Sit on my face!”
Robert, increasingly ostracised, being ‘arrested’ on the floor of the lap-dancing club by Raaj and Josh. Robert screams in pain as they wrestle him to the ground.
I’ve never felt more unsafe than in the company of the NJPD. I always felt safe and squirrelled away in Manhattan, below 110 Street and in Central Park, watching people throw frisbees and wanting to join in.
In September, the heat cooled into New York’s most golden hour. The New York Post notes ‘the subways have begun to breathe again’ and we enjoy blue, cloudless skies.
In October, the city blossoms into a final summer and the Mets and Yankees make the World Series. The ‘subway series’ pitched the great New York teams from Queens and the Bronx against one another. The Village Voice observes that far from playing the event down, the Mayor Rudi Giuliani is only trying to hype it up. Rival fans joke about setting off car bombs.
Winter, bitter, lacing cold, and Manhattan becomes a snowy refuge. At the Wollman Ice Rink you can drink hot chocolate with marsh mellows and revolve in an anticlockwise paradise overhung by gothic apartments.
Bolstered by its concrete towers, Manhattan snuggles micro cities within it. My Alphabet City girlfriend is moving to a new apartment. “I’ll live on Avenue B, but never C,” she confides as if avoiding a transatlantic odyssey.
I felt safest of all when gazing at New York’s pumping dark heart, rising above Versey and Liberty Street. I felt almighty in the Windows of the World restaurant on the 107th floor of the north tower of 1 World Trade Centre. There was an escalator leading to the 108th floor and the roof. I climbed it to the sky beyond, a dizzying height which I dared not see, and I still have the eatery’s reservation number.
