masculinity of the Clones reeked of trying too hard, indicating a level of insecurity that belied the very masculinity they were so intent on broadcasting. The Clones’ butch posturing looked to me like nothing more than ego assertion and emotional rigidity camouflaged in flannel and denim. Butch guys wasted so much psychic energy suppressing what they perceived as feminine in themselves (their vulnerable, nurturing, creative sides) they became enervated shells: virile and masculine outside, fearful and self-loathing inside.
Was I angry at the Clones? Well, yes. And yet, I also admired them . . . a bit, anyway. Their homogeneity was creepy, but it also made them super-visibly gay, which annoyed all the keep-it-hidden homophobes. When Dan White got his minimal sentence for shooting Harvey Milk, the Clones massively rioted outside City Hall, sending a clear message that from now on queer bashing had consequences. Go Clones! And there was definitely a playful aspect to the Clones’ masculinity. I mean, how seriously can one take grown men who walk around in cut-off short-shorts with mirrored sunglasses and yellow hard-hats? And, in all fairness, a lot clones were plenty campy when not cruising, enjoying old movies and worshipping divas like any good gay.
On some level I knew the time of the swishy, sissy fairy (the gay archetype with which I identified) was over. Sure, there would always be effeminate men, but the theatrical amplification of feminine traits as a means of broadcasting sexual preference was obsolete. I took solace in the realization that the sissy’s greatest spiritual consolation and most potent weapon—the camp sensibility—would live on. More and more hip straight people were imbibing camp’s glamtastic cocktail of amoral aestheticism, scathing wit, and the erudite appreciation of schmaltz. The queer lisp might die out, but there would always be people who found the earnest and mundane shriekingly funny.
Back to the Castro. After a few weeks I admitted to myself what I’d known from the start: Castro Street was not for me. I gave up going out all together and spent my nights at home, moping and whining. Most everyone is terrified of at least one thing beyond all reason: spiders, poverty, cancer . . . something. My greatest fear was solitude. Was I destined to sit alone in my room forever, unloved and forgotten by humanity? I was beginning to think so when I got wind of a development with the potential to change everything.
Chapter 4: Meet Michael
IT WAS THE BEST NEWS I’D heard in all my miserable eighteen years: On Monday nights a gay bar was going to start spinning new wave! A radio-friendly spin-off from punk, new wave combined a mood of stylish alienation with danceable pop beats and theatrical flair. Serious Thinkers and punk purists reviled it as insipid commercial dreck, but I didn’t care. New wave was fun, often campy, and fast becoming the music of choice for young gay weirdoes and misfits—the music we put on the stereo to remind ourselves that we were right and the world was wrong. A bar playing new wave was exactly the right place for me to find a boyfriend.
Monday night I spent two solid hours trying on everything in my closet before settling on a blue-and-black checkerboard dress shirt, a skinny orange tie with black polka dots, black peg-leg jeans, and red Converse sneakers. I slathered my face with foundation to cover my acne, gobbed black mascara on my lashes so they’d match my Lady Clairol blue-black hair, and smudged kohl around my eyes for added mystery. Then I went to the kitchen and inveigled my best friend and roommate Jennifer into coming along as my security blanket and wingman, the latter a role for which she was perfectly suited.
Stunningly pretty and partial to leopard print, spiky heels, and bleached hair, Jennifer looked like one of the Gabor sisters gone punk, and was, in fact, the lead singer of her own band, The Blowdryers. Gay men invariably adored her on sight and, once they got a load of her campy sensibility, worshipped her. Together we tromped down to the South of Market neighborhood where, on a desolate street full of closed auto repair shops and brick warehouses, we found and entered The Stud.
Being underage, we furtively slunk past the bar without buying drinks and settled against the back wall. The Stud’s dark, wood-paneled interior made it look like an Old West Saloon, but one in which the cowboys and gold miners had been magically replaced by new wave hipsters, glitter queens, gay punks, underground artists, hippie holdovers, beat poets, madwomen, and a smattering of unclassifiable oddballs—people who, when they finished putting on clothes, were not merely “dressed” but “working a look.” I had no doubt that each and every denizen of this depraved demimonde lived a life of fearless and noble eccentricity. And they were all having such a good time! People threw their heads back and cackled like maniacs, hoisted their cocktails with piratical heartiness, swished about with femme fatale belligerence, and danced with anarchic abandon to the best music ever: Siouxsie and the Banshees, XTC, Gang of Four, Joy Division, and the Flying Lizards.
Jennifer and I had been loitering for perhaps half an hour when a poetically thin and prodigiously freckled redhead leaning at the bar caught sight of us. Raising his thin eyebrows in a theatrical greeting, he strode our way with a bouncing gait. His outfit—tattered jeans with huge cuffs, a hole-y striped tee shirt, and a disintegrating black vinyl jacket held together with silver electrical tape—impressed me to no end by looking at once confidently bohemian and adorably little boyish.
“Hey, I’m Michael. You’re Jennifer Blowdryer. I saw your band play at the Mabuhay. Great show. I love that Farfisa organ, it’s so ’60s.”
“Thanks,” said Jennifer.
“I’m Alvin,” I volunteered.
Michael glanced at me. “Oh, hi.” He turned back to Jennifer. “So, when are you going to play again?”
For the rest of the evening, Michael did his best to entertain and enchant Jennifer, serving up compliments and flattering questions along with witticisms, grousing, and gossip. As he spoke, I marveled at his eyebrows, which were always arching, furrowing, or wiggling so as to offer meta-commentary on whatever blarney came out of his mouth. He almost didn’t even need to speak; all by themselves his eyebrows cracked jokes, made acerbic comments, and recited blank verse. (If this sounds implausible, please note that Leonard Bernstein once used only his eyebrows to conduct Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 in a live performance by the Vienna Philharmonic.) On learning Jennifer and I were teens, Michael—fully legal at twenty-one—bought rum and Cokes for us. When the B-52s came on, he jumped around the dance floor with us. When the night ended, he invited himself home with us. Then, once inside our flat, Michael turned to me with a be-dimpled smile and put his hand on my shoulder. “Which way’s your bedroom?”
I couldn’t have been more shocked if I’d stuck a wet finger in a light socket. My heart raced and thudded wildly as we fell onto my single, unmade bed. Michael’s skin felt silky warm and he smelled like playing in the backyard on a sunny summer day. Then he kissed me and I saw stars. Explosions. Implosions. Transmogrifications. Fireworks. The Earth moved, time grooved, and I fell through a crack in the space-time continuum to find myself inside an imaginary David Bowie song, a lost track from the Ziggy Stardust album all about Michael and me and our cosmic communion.
After making out for a while, we began trying to fold part A into slot B and such, but nothing quite fit anywhere. As I fought off waves of self-recrimination and panic (wasn’t the first time supposed to be magical?), Michael got out of bed and found his jacket lying on the floor. He produced a pint of bourbon from the pocket, took a long swig, and held it out my way. “Want some?” Unused to hard liquor, I took a tiny sip and handed it back. “Thanks.” Michael rejoined me on the bed and began talking. Over the next hour I learned he’d grown up in a working class Irish Catholic family, to whom he wasn’t “out.” Mom cashiered at a supermarket and Dad worked nights as a mechanic at the gigantic GE plant straddling his hometown, Pittsfield, Massachusetts. “Appropriately named ’cause it’s the pits,” averred Michael. He’d suffered all the usual gay persecution and had to get around town crawling through shrubbery
