post no. 819, in which mkf first experiences the magic that is meth

1991 (or maybe '92--fuck, i don't remember)

what i do remember is, the reason i found myself in vaseline alley that particular no-action night had less to do with sex than just wanting to get outta the house, because little arthur and his desperation were starting to get to me.  this also explains why i sat there in my car long past the point where it had become clear that the pickings had gone from slim to none--whether or not i got laid that night, i was determined not to head back to 841 until i was sure our visitor had gone to bed.

and then, suddenly, as i'm giving up, flicking my last butt out the window and reaching for the key, that thing that almost never happens, happens:  outta the 3am desolation, this blond twink fantasy vision in torn jeans, a chain harness and little else emerges from around the corner by the dirty bookstore, starts heading down la jolla, moving fast.

i wait for him to walk toward what must surely be home without even throwing me a disgusted glance.  but no--he looks over, spots me, makes a beeline straight to my window, leans in all bright-eyed, licks my face before i can even react, says, "i need a place to stay tonight."

if two years working the low streets of weho had given me nothing else, it had at least taught me not to question the random gift from god when it drops into my lap, so within five minutes of that first lick we're in my bedroom, and five minutes after that i'm deep inside him.

bliss, right?  turns out, not so much.

i mean, his beauty combined with the novelty of the whole thing carried me for awhile, but after twenty minutes or so of vigorous A-game fucking, i begin to notice some things that kinda take the edge off.

like, for instance, he's distracted--and after two years of generally taking for granted the undivided attention of whoever i happen to be fucking, this is new.  what's more, kid isn't even hard, and what the fuck could possibly be up with that?

but the worst thing is, he will not shut up (and it ain't sexy talk, trust me).

so, what had started out hot fairly quickly morphs into something else entirely--some kinda endurance marathon challenge that has far less to do with sex than with just getting the damn thing done.

and i am determined to get 'er done; it becomes a validation thing, a point of pride.  i pull out all the tricks--bend that boy into every position possible, fuck him hard, fuck him slow and sweet, use long strokes, angled attacks, even resort to quick little asian-style rabbit-punch jabs, but nothing--not even my patented never-fail sideways prostate-tickler special--can get him off.

when after a full hour (because i could do that back then) of futility i finally roll off him, unspent, over it and exhausted, and he looks at me with those bright eyes and says, "that was great--rest a few minutes and we'll do it again," i know i'm up against some new, potent unknown evil force in the universe that is stronger than me; i just don't know what.

what i do know is, dawn is coming soon, i need sleep, and i need to be rid of this freak.  but i promised him a place to stay, and i'm a man of my word.

so i do the first of the two bad things i'll do this night.

as we stand together outside my roommate's door, i reassure the boy once again what a great top paul is (while crossing my fingers behind my back and hoping god won't strike me dead for this egregious lie), open the door, shove the kid through the blackness in the general direction of paul's bed, pull it shut and stumble back to my own room, turn out the lights, hope for the best.

which hope turns out to be remarkably short-lived--before i've even gotten my eyes good and closed, my door flies open, the lights go on, and there's paul, wild-haired, wild-eyed, red nose snot-clogged with sleep, underwear askew, screaming, "a bottom--seriously?  you sent me a BOTTOM? WHAT'D YOU THINK WE WERE GONNA DO--BUMP PUSSIES?!", as he shoves back the gift i'd so thoughtfully sent his way before totally unnecessarily slamming my door.

"fuck, " i think, knowing i'll pay for this.  "what am i gonna do with this kid?  if only royce was here."

but royce isn't here--the roommate who might've actually been useful in this situation is currently bunking with his boyfriend so that his visiting friend, the aforementioned arthur, can use his room at our house while he's in town.

see, royce was constantly inviting friends from texas to come out and stay with us, but arthur has been by far the most needy of the bunch--he'd arrived all innocent and starry-eyed and shit, anticipating a week of decadence and debauchery in this legendary sin city where the fun never stops.  and it's not like arthur isn't presentable, and it's not like we haven't tried to serve his fantasy up for him--we've taken him to rage and mickey's and studio one and mother lode and circus and even spike, practically shoved him at any guy who checked him out--but the shyness that arthur had hoped to leave behind in fort worth has unfortunately accompanied him to LA.

so, bottom line, despite the collective and exhaustive best efforts of three of the biggest whores in weho, poor arthur hasn't managed to get himself laid, and his week is almost up.

as the blond bottomless pit crawls back into my bed and starts pawing at my limp junk, i think about it for no more than a second, figure, hell, it'll give him a story to tell the folks back home, and i might even get some sleep.

and with no more consideration than that, i drag the blond boy outta my bed once more and lead him down the hall to door number three.

ready or not, arthur, it's showtime.

*     *     *     *     *

when i awake with a jolt, remembering, the sun is high in my window.  i hear the tv--paul's at work, so that must mean arthur's out there.  i throw on clothes, walk out to the living room, apprehensive.

arthur's sitting on the couch with his back to me, watching sally jessy or something.  he hears me, whips around, animated in a way i'd never seen him before, his formerly perpetually-morose face splitting into a huge grin.

i just stare at him, amazed--this is a changed boy, and i guess i did it.  i relax.

the words start pouring outta him.  "wow, what a going-away present, mike!  cody told me you picked him out just for me--i can't believe you got me a porn star!"

i smile, willing to let him go back to fort worth thinking that's what life is like in weho--porn stars just routinely and magically appear in your bedroom in the middle of the night.  hell, what can it hurt?

and then he says, "and that crystal stuff--i never knew sex could be like that.  we did it for hours."

and that's when i look closer, notice how bright his eyes are.

spike and jason don't live here anymore

"whaddya think--doable?", paul asks, pointing to a tiny blip that had just turned the corner at the end of the block.

royce, instantly:  "nah, he walks old."

it's autumn 1990, and i'm sitting with my new roommates in royce's mitsubishi galant on a saturday evening, parked near some seedy bar i'd never heard of but would come to know well, getting my first lesson in the fine art of cruising, LA style.

"he walks old?", i ask, incredulous, from the backseat.  "he, if it even is a he, is half a mile away, for chrissakes, and it's dark.  how can you possibly--"

"shut up and watch, and maybe you'll learn something," paul snaps without taking his eyes off the target, and sure enough, as the guy nears, his age becomes apparent even to me.  as this geriatric all-of-40 year-old comes abreast of the car, he mistakes royce and paul's triumphant grins for interest, leans in hopefully and then back out again just as quick when they break into the opening lines of "from a distance", wave him away and start laughing (they were real funny that way, those two). 

as noted more than once in these pages, i've often wondered how much my choice of first gay roommates had to do with the fag i would end up becoming.  academic at this point, i suppose, but i will say this for 'em:  those boys taught me well.  within a month, i could pick the three doables outta a crowd of a dozen at a hundred yards, just from the way they walked.  it's a skill that would serve me well in what would turn out to be the fading days of a golden age.

*     *     *     *     *

i try to explain to the young'uns sometimes what it was like living gay in weho in those days, before the meth and the internet changed everything, and the opportunities for instant, baggage-free sex were everywhere. it was a heady time, especially for a sex-starved 34-year-old just off the turnip truck, and saying i took to it like a duck to water--to the point where i started to scare even my seasoned, slutty roomies a little--would be a bit of an understatement.

in those days--and even now, really--west hollywood was divided vertically by the berlin wall known as la cienega boulevard; the glitzy, worked-out, pubic-hair-trimming types tended to stay west of this line (unless they wanted to go slumming), and the rest of us preferred the cheap drinks and cheaper company to be found to the east.

the two principal cruise bars of east west hollywood in those days were gold coast (still there, sort of) and spike (god, i miss spike), and i would become equally at home in both.  but since my primary interest in going to these places was never clubbing itself, i quickly became far more at home working the streets that surrounded them (see the helpful infographic i just whipped up below).

(oh, and where did we live?

if i hadn't understood why paul had been so insistent on that particular house when we moved in, i would soon see his point.)

by way of shorthand, paul, royce and i quickly adapted the nomenclature that pretentious LA realtors used to put lipstick on crappy neighborhoods (i.e., every low-rent shithole within 10 miles of the place being advertised as "beverly hills adjacent") to describe these areas, and thus our favored hunting grounds became

1.  gold coast adjacent

what can i say about gold coast?  it's one of those bars that looks about the same now as it did when it first opened, and back in the day, it attracted lotsa beer-drinking boyhounds and the boys who loved 'em.  while i spent many happy hours there, it was its immediate sphere of influence that interested me far more.

see, gold coast was ideally situated for my purposes--right on the boulevard just across la jolla from the smutty bookstore (a), big parking lot out back (b), and, most important, backed up by a cut-through with diagonal parking--well, here, i'll show ya--

note to the four forlorn guys parked diagonally above: 

give it up, bitches--it ain't coming back

known infamously, affectionately and forevermore as vaseline alley (c).

by day sedate and businesslike, this little plot of pavement was transformed after sundown into an ever-changing panoply of sexual seekers of all ages and stripes, the only thing uniting them being that fire down below, as the line of cars went round and round.  it was here that i scored some of my most memorable conquests--the stardust twins and that guy with the infant-seat that a certain commenter will never let me live down (and yeah, noblesavage, i know i'm gonna go to hell when i die) in the parking lot, and my first love in my favored pole position spot in vaseline alley, for instance.

and if the crush got too much, all you had to do was take a walk (or a drive) down la jolla towards melrose, and watch for the boys on foot and the headlights coming toward you.  guys would beckon to you from the bushes of the more well-landscaped houses you passed, and drivers would slow, check you out and throw their doors open for you if they liked what they saw.

eschewing the shiny benzes and bimmers (invariably, either desperate oldies or coiffed weho faggots), i would always keep an eye out for the dented subarus and nissans with duct tape and different-color fenders, because i knew therein would be the wild young boys i loved so much, fresh off their dishwashing jobs at trendy westside eateries, looking for a little action before heading home to their girlfriends in inglewood and montebello.  if they were willing, i'd drag 'em home to 841; if they were gun-shy, no worries--i knew every dark alley and unattended parking garage within a five-mile radius.

i drove down la jolla yesterday, stopped at the sign at waring, reflexively looked left (old habits die hard, i guess), wondered if the upscale yuppies living behind those protective walls of dense foliage had any clue how many truckloads of used condoms had to be removed from their pretty little back garden in the process of transforming it from the boarded-up derelict it had been 20 years ago into the polished jewel it is today.

i'm thinking their realtor may have failed to disclose that little factoid.

2.  spike adjacent

one night, wanting to get away from yet one more houseful of royce's friends from texas, i announced on my way out the door where i was headed, showed up all bleary-eyed next morning and when one of 'em asked me brightly if i had had fun with spike and jason--and once paul, royce and i managed to pick ourselves up off the floor--the place gained its new name.

i remember one time--i still feel kinda bad about this--i was leaving spike with some guy when a much hotter guy pulled up to the curb with a wave, i leaned in, he grabbed my shirt, pulled me halfway through the window with one heavily-tattooed arm and, nose-ring to nose, snarled, "you'd rather be with me, right?", i said, "drive", and he took off in a screeching puff of smoke with my legs still waving in the air, leaving the other guy behind in his dust.

that was the way you had fun with spike and jason.

oh, and to those readers who may feel i'm giving west weho short shrift in this post, lemme just sum up that most sanctified holy of holies like this:  you could tell the main cruising streets over there--larrabee, cynthia, and (especially) keith--by the trail of blood left by herds of manicured queens dragging their poor lil' pomeranians up and down the sidewalks until their tiny paws were raw on the pretext that they were just out for a "walk" in case they ran into one of their equally secretly-slutty girlfriends (and tell me i'm wrong about this, anonymous).

me, i preferred the no-bullshit honesty of east weho--you ran into a guy on the street at 4am there, there was no pretense--you were there because you wanted to fuck, and you both knew it.  saved everybody a lot of goddam time.

anyway, moving on...

3.  drake's adjacent

[you know how you always laugh at people in respectable neighborhoods who raise a shit-stink when some porno establishment moves into their midst outta fear of the element it'll bring with it?  well, turns out they might be onto something.]

for the first few weeks, i was behind the curve on this one--i'd follow the trail of cars down la jolla to melrose as usual, make the left along with 'em, and then watch as, instead of making the next left back towards gold coast,  more and more would keep heading east.  what the fuck?,  i'd ask myself, and one night i followed to find out.

and, holy shit, what i found--a whole new hunting ground had sprung up around a glossy new adult video store named drake's that had just opened in the trendy melrose district.  and, unlike the darkened slightly-seedy neighborhoods that surrounded spike and gold coast, these were clean, brightly-lit streets filled with neat little bungalows full o' moms and pops who clearly had no idea what had just hit 'em.

to this day, i still dunno what it was--maybe it was all the light, or maybe it was the fact that the cops hadn't yet caught onto this movable feast--but, where business at the previously-discussed locations was generally conducted somewhat furtively and under cover of darkness, drake's adjacent was more like the american graffiti of gay cruising.  seriously--streams of cars full of young guys waving and hollering at each other with music blaring as they passed, others making out with each other on their hoods and trunks and hollering back, doors opening, occupants exchanging--it was like nothing i had ever seen before.

and lemme tellya--it was fun.

key memories:

(1) horrifying grandma.  it's like 3am and i'm stopped in the middle of the street--curson or sierra bonita, i don't remember which--talking to a buncha kids who are leaning in my windows, and some woman in curlers and bathrobe comes storming outta her house, waves her fist and curses us from the middle of her yard, and we just look at her until she gives up and goes back inside.

(2) the night the empire struck back.  i know what they are the minute i turn the corner onto sierra bonita, and what they mean--those ugly black rubber hoses stretched halfway across the street--slam on my brakes, and, after thinking a minute, wave my arm out the window in a "follow me, boys" gesture, slalom left around the first traffic-counter and then right around the next, with a whole line o' cars behind me doing the same, as we form a continuous serpentine conga line dodging the traps the evil homeowners had induced the authorities to lay for us in an attempt to kill the party.  it's the only gay trend i can lay claim to starting, and i take some small pride in that (shut up, noblesavage).

(3)  the night the universe told me the fun was over.  as dawn is breaking over the stubbed-out end of a long, fruitless saturday night, a really hot, well-dressed guy rounds the corner into the alley, gives me a long look

finally, i think

disappears back from whence he came

what the fuck?,  i think

and then reappears, glaring, leading his equally well-dressed wife and their two young daughters in frilly dresses, their eyes shielded by their mother from the sight of the degenerate in the car across the way.  i assume their destination is, first, the garage adjacent to the house, and then probably church, but i'm so far down in my seat by that time that i really can't tell you for sure.

*     *     *     *     *

this, folks, for better or worse, was west hollywood as i experienced it in the early- to mid-nineties--no AOL, no manhunt, no grindr, no digital at all; just analog, up-close and personal.

i really don't know what else to say about those years--i was a kid in a candy store, and, like any kid gorging himself on long-forbidden treats, conscience really didn't play a large part in some of the decisions i made back then.

kids today just look at me when i tell 'em these stories.  "you're telling me you used to could just drive around and pick up guys on the street?", they ask me incredulously.

if you only knew, boys--if you only knew.

ghost story

all i have to say about the following story is what i said back then, and what i will maintain unto my grave:  (a) andrew was a singularly supple piece of ass; and (b) that motherfucker moved without any goddam help from me.

*     *     *     *     *

weho, 1992 (or thereabouts)

i still remember how it all started: i was fuckingdating this hot, snarky little blond south african number, to whom my roommate-at-the-time paul took a particular shine. one day when he was over at the house, paul roped him into a discussion of one of his favorite subjects: the paranormal.

having heard it all before, i tried to head him off, but was too late--turns out andrew was into all that shit, and before i knew it, my other roommate royce was involved and the three of 'em had a pre-party seance planned for the following saturday night.

after andrew left, i remember asking 'em what the fuck, and they told me not to worry--it'd be fun.

when i inquired as to how exactly we would be communicating with the spirit world and paul whipped out his ouija board, i couldn't help it--i burst out laughing, even though i knew that was a mistake.

see, it was always two-against-one in that house.  as the guy who was there only because they needed a third, i had met paul exactly once before the three of us moved into 841 north crescent heights boulevard, and royce only on the day of.

they, on the other hand, had known each other for years, were several years younger and had been out forever--and took every opportunity to remind me of same.

oh, and the other thing they had in common?  paul and royce were both poz back when that was still a death sentence--which perilous status, they explained to me on that particular day, had conferred upon them them an extrasensory sensitivity unknown to the rest of us mere mortals.

"let's just say we're both on speaking terms with the other side, mike," paul told me, "but royce is closer."  royce confirmed this with a solemn nod.

when i snorted again, paul asked, "you ever play with a ouija board when you were a kid?"

"of course i did--that's why i find this shit so ridiculous."

"c'mere--sit across from me."

to humor him, i pulled up a chair, did as he asked.  he balanced the board on our knees, we rested our fingertips on the planchette and, working together, spent a few minutes spelling out words royce called out.

it was every bit as slow and jerky a process as i remembered--even a simple word like "cat" required concentration and the coordination of two people's movements in searching out each letter on the board.

"see how hard it is when you consciously try to do it?"

when i nodded, he smiled, replaced the board in its box and said, "remember that when saturday night rolls around, ok?"

i had no idea what he meant, but i'd find out soon enough.

*     *     *     *     *

by the time saturday night did roll around, word had gotten out--we had a full house.  the lights were dimmed, candles lit, margaritas flowing and chattering fags jammed into every available nook and cranny.  not exactly an atmosphere conducive to conjuring up spirits, i thought to myself, but whatever.

the stage was set:  the furniture in the living room had been pushed to the periphery, and two opposing dining-room chairs set up at its center, with a third off to the side for the guy who'd be recording the spirit's every utterance on a legal pad [me, as it turned out].

when the time came, paul called for quiet, and he and royce took their places.

they sat across from each other so close that their feet were almost touching, and balanced the board on their knees.  upon this shaky foundation was laid the planchette, upon which the tips of their fingers came to rest.

as the room fell silent, paul called out, "is there anybody out there?  i'm sure this old house has some stories to tell."

nothing.

paul repeated the question, and waited--again, nothing.

this went on for several minutes, as the crowd grew increasingly raucous--when all of a sudden, the pointer jerked violently across the board to 'yes,' and royce said, "ah, we've got a live one."

the laughter stopped, and the room got very quiet.

our spirit's name, as it turned out, was jackrabbit, and he "answered" questions--from royce and paul, and from the audience at large--for almost an hour.

and boy, was he a chatterbox--i was writing down each letter the pointer stopped at, and i swear to god it was moving so fast i could barely keep up. i further swear that royce and paul's eyes were closed--hell, they weren't even looking down; there was no way they were doing this on their own, and the answers to each person's question were too weirdly on-point to be made up.

paul tired pretty quickly, so several of us took turns at the board, sitting across from royce, with varying degrees of success. some couldn't get the thing to move at all, and others could barely keep it on the board.

me?  i'll never forget the feeling that came over me when i took my place across from royce, placed my fingers on the planchette, someone called out a question--i don't remember what--and that goddam thing flew across the board, completely independent of any conscious effort on my part.  but once it happened, and i accepted that it was happening, it was almost like good sex--i just let go, and let the spirit take me where it would.

please remember--up to this point i had been about as sensitive to the "spirit world" as a pile of rocks, and this was my first tangible inkling that maybe there was something out there after all, even if it was nothing more than a collective consciousness we were tapping into.

anyway, as the alcohol flowed and the crowd's awe faded, the questions became silly, and the session ended when jackrabbit's answers began to take on a childish, petulant tone that quickly degenerated into dark, violent threats against a couple of the biggest wise-asses.  royce, who had warned us earlier to be respectful, said the spirit wasn't happy about not being taken seriously.

whatever--bottom line, what had started out as lighthearted fun turned ugly and scary just as fast, and we quit, headed out for the bars, and those of us who weren't already got shitfaced as quickly as possible.

*     *     *     *     *

we talked about doing it again, but somehow never got around to it--life, as it has a tendency to do, intervened.

andrew and i parted ways shortly thereafter.

royce, turns out, was closer to the other side than any of us knew.  his undoing--paul and i both tried to talk him out of it--would prove to be a late-term circumcision gone awry

a white-faced paul after viewing the damage: "lemme put it this way--if he ever wants a blowjob again, he'll have to drive to silverlake"

the resulting infection from which ultimately killed him.

i'd move out a few months after that, leaving paul with two new roommates--the legendary dougs--to fill the void royce and i left in our wake.

ultimately, paul himself would abandon 841 and move in with his friends rod and tim--who, while they welcomed him with open arms, wouldn't allow the ouija board under their roof.

which is how it ended up in my possession, forgotten until today.

my only regret is that i didn't clean out this corner of the garage a little earlier--this woulda been a perfect halloween post.