Kobek - The Future Wont Be Long

I moved to New York not long after my mother killed my father, or was it my father who murdered my mother? Anyhoo, in a red haze of blood and broken bone, one did in the other. Several weeks were spent filling out paperwork and cleaning up the gore.

After I finished with these burdens, I abandoned my siblings and boarded a Greyhound bus in the parking lot of a corner store on the outskirts of my Podunk little Wisconsin town. Thirty-six hours later, I was in the city.

When I came out of the Port Authority, a building that scared me shitless, I couldnt see the Empire State Building, so I asked a cop how to get to the river. He looked at me and laughed, hard, because of how countrified I was, a real corn poke, and showed me which direction was west.

I walked on 42nd in daylight. No one mugged me. At the end of the street, I made my way across the highway and onto a pier. I looked out at the Hudson River. I looked out at New Jersey. I watched boats on the river. I saw the distant Statue of Liberty and believed in her gaudy symbolism.

People in New York would never understand about my Podunk little Wisconsin town. It was an issue of size. Even in Jerkwater, Ohio, or Backstabbing, Pennsylvania, you still had neighborhoods and streets and thousands of citizens. My Podunk little town was seven hundred people, mostly farmers.

In a place like that, what you do for fun, for amusement, is drive, day in, day out, day in, day out. You cruise the three blocks of Main Street in your car, seeing boys you knew from school, pretending that you want to fuck the girls.

So with the possibility of NYC, I was like, okay, please. I am yours. You may conquer me. I submit to your underground system of the soul. Bring me to 241st Street and White Plains Road. Bring me to Coney Island. Bring me to Midtown. Bring me to Morningside Heights. Bring me to Flushing, Gowanus, Wall Street. I am yours. I am yours. Free me from the tyranny of the automobile!

I could walk, at last, I could walk. Back in Wisconsin, youd drive for three solid hours to buy an album, or a book, or pants, or anything. And that would only bring you to what people back home call a city, a place of maybe ten thousand people.

Oh people, oh the people, oh New York, oh your glorious people. Your Puerto Ricans, your Hebrews, your Muslims, your Chinese, your Eurotrash, that fat little fuck Norman Mailer, your uptown rich socialites, your downtown scum, your Black Americans, your Koreans, your Haitians, your Jamaicans, your Italians, your kitchen Irish, Julian Schnabel, your Far Rockaway and Staten Island white trash. Oh New York, I loved your people. They were all so beautiful! Many of them were hideous, really ugly with terrible teeth, but even the ugly ones were beautiful too! Oh I was in heaven.

And your fags, New York, oh god, your fags. All I hoped was that they would love me.

I was as queer as a wooden nickel, but Wisconsin hadnt offered this yokel much opportunity for erotic love, so what common language could I even speak with the cocksmen and leatherboys?

One day in ninth grade, I made the mistake of blowing my best friend, Abraham. I was afraid to let Abe come in my mouth, so I got him to the edge and made him spasm into his blanket. As punishment, he refused to reciprocate, which was a real downer, but he did give me a handjob, which was okay.

I went home and thought about it. I decided that Id let my best friend come in my mouth.

The next day, as I received the first blowjob of my life, in walked his mother. She saw everything. Her son, naked, me, naked, my cock in his mouth, my hands on the light down of his stomach. I ran out of their house and drove home. Neither Abe nor his mother ever said a word, but it ruined the friendship and I spent my high school years clutched by fear, worried that Id need to leave our town in shame.

I never did anything else, not with anyone other than a few girls who were kissed to keep up appearances. Their tongues in my mouth like soft robots, offering abstract interest but no sexual desire, no longing, no need.

And then, New York, there you were, like a homo homecoming queen standing before me, hands on your hips, regarding this shy wallflower. With your Meatpacking District, your West Village piers and Fire Island. I was yours, crying out, Oh, take me, take me, take me!

But before anything could happen, I needed a place to stay.

*

A guy from my Podunk little town had moved to the city. This guy from my Podunk little town was about three years older than me. I asked the guys brother for the guys phone number.

Watch out, his brother said, we dont talk much with him and I heard hes living in squalor.

Squalor sounded fabulous. I didnt care about the phone bill, so I called New York. His name was David.

A girl answered. I asked for David.

Okay, dude, she said, hold on.

I waited for about ten minutes. When he came to the phone, he spoke with this high, nasal voice.

Hey, he whined, is this El Gato?

Its me, I said, you know me, remember?

But he didnt.

Im the one, I said, remember, Im that guy who set the school record for both the fifty- and hundred-yard dashes in the same day?

Oh, yeah, he said, you, that guy, why are you calling?

I begged and groveled until he said that if I made it out east, I could stay with him, giving me his address on 12th Street. David explained the crude navigational tools of New York life, telling me to look for the Empire State Building and then head in that direction. Once I was past that giant, north and south could be discerned by looking for the Twin Towers, the relative position of which also indicated east from west. This method was useless for people who went above 30th Street, but come on, David said, who goes above 30th Street? Maybe some assholes for drugs.

*

I walked from the highway to Times Square. That was some hell of a place. You know all about it. Who doesnt? The sex and sleaze that made its butterfly transformation into a tourist trap, a Walt Disney wonderland. I saw it happen, or, well, I was in the city while it happened, because, really, it was going above 30th Street. Who went to Times Square? Maybe for Club USA. But otherwise?