PRETTY BROKEN PEOPLE:
lipstick, leather jeans,
a death of New York
• Martin Belk

download the entire extended excerpt (print version only)

Flashback 1982.
prelude

I was fifteen. Daddy had flown me up to New York on one of his business trips when he worked for Calvin Klein. I was scared senseless. Daddy always treated me like an equal and put me into situations suited more for him than me. In a way it was good because I had to reach really high. Other times it wasn’t so good ’cause I just missed the mark completely. Hard to wear really big shoes. Like when I was around twelve and I’d go to stay with him for a weekend and his girlfriends would come over and party. Or when I was fourteen after he remarried and we went to visit her family and they let me drink all the Jim Beam I wanted and then got mad ’cause I got drunk. Or when I was sixteen and we went back to those same people’s house and they were doing crystal and Daddy offered me some and I wouldn’t take it because Grandmother, his mother, had put the fear of God into me about drugs. And how that same night I was supposed to watch out for my 13-year-old sister, in the midst of people shouting and playing loud music and Daddy breaking the front door ’cause he couldn’t get the chain off. And how I didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to close the door to my sister’s room where she was sleeping because the fumes from the kerosene heater needed to get out. Daddy tried to make up for it by taking me to the local theme park or on trips like this one to New York. Nobody’s perfect. Nobody’s wrong all the time. Dad gave me my horizon.

I flew up at night. Mama dropped me off at the airport. Mama always looked worried when she let go of me for one of these little excursions. I’d been on planes before. This time, a lady sat in the row with me. Thin, sophisticated, middle-aged, wearing a plum-colored knit designer shawl. She must have been able to tell I was a tad nervous. She talked to me here and there. It would be an hour and a half flight — the same time it took for Mama to drive me and my sister Adrienne up to Grandmother and Popey’s house. Which blew my mind. The lady had the window seat but encouraged me to lean over and look at the majestic city unfolding before us. As we approached, she became attentive. Like when you first go into a church or an ancient ruin or a graveyard. ‘I just love to see the lights. Isn’t it just wonderful?’ I notice crisp, twinkling lights and a blur of massive buildings and reaching for us—the sky did end. I had my instructions upon arrival. Man with sign at gate. Go with him. He drove a dark Lincoln Continental, my favorite car. He was a black guy, mid-twenties. He didn’t sound like folk from back home. He was sharp, articulate. Asked me about where I was from and if it were my first trip to the city, but didn’t make me feel like a tourist.I fell in love with the city immediately. We stayed in the Plaza 50 hotel, 155 East Fiftieth Street. In midtown. Back then, New York was truly still New York. I remember a distinct charge in the air. The smell of the roasting chestnuts, hot dogs and falafels on every other corner. Popcorn mixed with car exhaust. The occasional steel-sifted breeze to clear it all out to sea just so it can start over again. Big people, little people, sleazy people, spiffy people, white people, black people, pimps, businessmen and kids all on the same pavement. And queers. Here I was a skinny, dorky, goofy teenager from the south with big hair, penny loafers, a red sweater, brown checked scarf and gentleman’s raincoat that was three sizes too big for me. And New York didn’t care and I loved her for it. People didn’t stare at you. I’d never been in a place where you didn’t have to worry about everyone around you. A place where freedom doesn’t hang as a street sign, but climbs down and dances on the
pole for you. Daddy took me out the first night with a group of friends from Calvin Klein. They were all talk about territories and sales and figures.

We started at a Steak House, Christ Cella. I’ll never forget the name because I had never been to a steakhouse that wasn’t named steer-this or burnt-bull-that. I had to wear the nice clothes from the plane trip. They didn’t quite fit. The place was run like a military establishment. But friendlier. I dropped my cloth napkin and before I could reach down to get it a new one was in my lap and the old one gone. I could get used to this. Except the condescending grins I got when I asked for steak sauce. Daddy had to whisper to me that it was an insult to the chef. Well? If you want me to know things, send me to some fancy school or something. I was winging it here — which, as I’d later discover, when done well, is one of the most admirable skills of a newcomer or New Yorker. And when we left the restaurant, Daddy gave me the tip money. Told me to hold it in the palm of the right hand. As I left, Mr ‘D’ shook my hand and removed the bills with the art of Dickens’s Dodger. I remain impressed.

Daddy worked most of the time. He was there for business. I wandered Midtown aimlessly. He’d drawn me a map. I wish it had included the Village. He’d been down plenty of times, but kept me out of there and especially that Uncle Charlie’s, apparently a queer bar he and his co-workers had gone to. Kept out of what? I didn’t even know where the Village was. All I knew was where Daddy took me. We got to the Empire State Building and the Waldorf and Rockefeller Center and places like that. St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Daddy called the great big altar a ‘mosque’ and I went along without a thought. I was delighted in his enthusiasm. We didn’t see things like that often. We rarely saw things like
that together.

Over a few days, the people at Klein became a little more chatty with me, but seriously, what does a sixteen-year-old have to say to a twenty-or-thirty-something salesperson? I didn’t like being the ‘kid-visitor’. I wanted to grow up, or older, so bad it hurt. Daddy worked with a slick, good-looking blond guy. Smooth, pale skin. His body filled out his clothes like an athlete, solid. Young, a top seller in the office. Had the New York territory. He gave me double-takes when Dad wasn’t looking, and asked me a lot of questions. Little did he know. Little did I know.

One night Dad took me out to a dance club with the Klein people. The blond guy wasn’t with us. I kinda hoped he’d come. He was the only one who seemed interested in me. Called Heartbreak, the club was a cafeteria by day, dance hall by night. I had to keep my head down as Daddy and the rest paid our way in. The booze started flowing. Daddy told me to order vodka tonics. Nice starter drink. Ok. I probably guzzled a dozen of them in the first hour. Ended up dancing all night, even getting kissed by a big black haired Greek girl. Named Theresa. I think. I didn’t really want to kiss her, but it was a small price to pay to have a friend and get away from Daddy’s crowd. I was in New York City and kissing somebody. Anybody. Theresa was a big girl, and wore a cream, tunic-style dress with light-tan leather trim. Shoes with straps and a handbag completed her outfit. She had a heavy accent and her dark red lipstick reflected the lights from the disco balls. I didn’t know if she was from New York or Greece or both. Dad was partying ‘til the break of dawn on the other side of the room. He’d given me fifty bucks. They were playing great music, it was a Grace Jones kind of jam. Pull up to the bumper, bab-ay… We drank a lot drinks which gave me an excuse to keep going back to the bar which I liked ‘cause there was an Italian bartender wearing a purple tuxedo shirt, hair combed back, movie-star face. His shirt fell open when he leaned over to get ice or something. He reminded me of the good looking guys in Saturday Night Fever. Dark buh-lack hair. I’d never seen a guy with looks like that. He was great. More attention than I’d received socially in my entire life. Theresa’s friend got tired and had to leave. She asked if I wanted to come back to Queens. I said I couldn’t. She took down the name of the hotel Plaza 50. She told me to be ready in the morning, only a few hours away. She would call and pick me up and we would go to Bloomingdale’s to buy her some bras. Only Bloomingdale’s had the kind she liked. I agreed to go with her. I thought that it would be so cool to have my own friend in New York to run around with. The walk home was fuzzy.

The next morning I woke up early. I could still hear the music in my ears. I felt real sick, but persisted in getting up. I didn’t know how to make myself throw up back then, or that it could’ve helped the massive hangover. Daddy was snoring in the other bed. He raised his head to ask me what I was doing. With a ring in my voice I told him my new friend was coming to get me. He rolled over. I figured morning for Theresa meant anytime before noon, but generally thought she meant between ten and eleven. I dozed off again. Woke up when Daddy started shuffling around in the bathroom, electric shaver and all. Cologne. Knock at door — one of the men from Klein. It was after noon. The man asks if we want to go down to the deli for some brunch. I start explaining that I was expecting this call. I could smell their patronage. Daddy started explaining how I shouldn’t get disappointed. I went to brunch. Dammit. I didn’t want anything from her but to go to Bloomingdale’s. I only wanted a friendly connection to the city.

I was supposed to leave on a flight that night. I got on the phone and changed my ticket to the middle of the week. Dad told me not to expect a lot of partying, because he would be busy. Good. I wanted to wander. I wrote in my diary how I had to be in this place, this city. How I had to come back here. I wandered the streets all day. Had no idea where I was going. It didn’t dawn on me to buy a map. I just wandered and went into whatever I found interesting. One morning, while walking in midtown, I notice a young blond guy, shorter than the man at the office. It was overcast. He had on a chocolate brown dress raincoat, but he didn’t button it up the way Dad’s friends did. His was open, slightly swinging behind him. He carried a package or something — leather case perhaps, in his left arm. It was early in the day, probably eleven or so. He took a look at me, kept walking. He was walking faster than me. I had on my red sweater, raincoat. I decided to follow him. I didn’t know what I wanted from him. I didn’t know what I’d say if he stopped. I just thought he looked different. Sophisticated even. After two blocks, I felt him notice me again but he made no gesture to confirm it. He varied his steps and sped up a little. I wasn’t trying to intimidate, but I was, in fact, following the guy. He turned off of one of the side streets and into a private courtyard leading to a building entrance. His keys were out. Once the door was open he seemed to pause. I needed him to pause. Then he disappeared inside.

• • • introduction Don’t get me wrong. At its grand finale, our club was just as big a spectacle as the night it began: on the moist Friday night of April 15, 1994, SqueezeBox! opened its womb for the world to see. My friend Blair and I threw our leather MC jackets on stage beneath Misstress Formika’s six-inch heels, while she belted a rousing you gotta fight for your right to be queer to christen the joint. Just three-point-five months after Rudolf Giuliani raised his iron fist to be sworn in as Mayor of New York City, SqueezeBox! raised its middle finger on Spring Street — and would outlast Rudy’s reign over Manhattan, at least.Every Friday night for a decade the crowds came, came, and kept coming. Converging for a rock scene I took for granted as the way anyone ‘in his right mind’ would want. Black leather at midnight, guitars screeching ‘til dawn. Glitter in your breakfast cereal and on your trick from the night before. Those of us who worked there created it, lived it, and made love to it. Counter culture became my career which was good, some of the time. I loved that place and all the people in it, most of the time. America the beautiful, back of the bus. As a young twenty-something, if I’d not been running on the go-out-booze-get-laid-recover hamster wheel, I could have found a way to turn the place into a true empire. By 2008 standards, they’re selling a whole lot less for a whole more…we packed more life and sex into that city than any stupid TV show ever could. There was talk of SqueezeBox! Records – we certainly had enough bands to sign. There were side gigs at colleges in New Jersey and Vermont. Private parties in LA and Tokyo. Since the big Debbie Harry internet show in January ’96, she and Chris got back onstage, reunited Blondie, and their new single Maria took over the international airwaves. John Cameron Mitchell blew the roof off with Hedwig. Pat Briggs had Psychotica so sewn up, that Marilyn Manson was taking notes. It was all a glittering, delicious mess. I was a mess. But maybe that’s exactly how my turbulent twentieth century was supposed to end.By the middle 1997 Clinton’s DNA was hardening on Monica’s blue dress, and the Republicans, right-wingers and brethren of the cult-of-the-reinvented-Jesus would try for years to beat him from office. On the streets America followed suit, times were getting tough. Closer to home, the cocaine-crazed drug vibe, infighting and troubles with other underground clubs began to wear me out. People began to shift from going out just to be fabulous — like we did in the Big Apple—to going out just to get fucked-up — like they did in suburbia. Homogenization lead, a lot New Yorkers to forget they were living in the center of a cultural universe. Most of the so-called gay community loathed SqueezeBox! from the start, most likely because we were only queers. Just queers. Half gay queers, half straight queers. A blurry crowd. None of us went to a gym, owned lycra, found khaki appealing or could force the rainbow flag to go with black leather. Nobody played fair — not since the old East-Village-Pyramid-Black-Lips-DeeeLite-Blackbox-Channel-69-Boybar-Wigstock-at-Thompkins-Square-Park days. Contributing to the atmosphere of beige, Giuliani’s “Quality-of-Life” troops were hemorrhaging throughout the city. They’d harassed other clubs out of business. Some chick from Boston stood up at a community board meeting and whined because she couldn’t sleep in her newly renovated apartment located just above the Coney Island High dance floor — which had been there at least twenty years. A bunch of yuppies and blue-hairs formed a group called the Save Avenue A Association – although Avenue A didn’t need saving unless you were a real estate developer. The best parties sprang up by surprise on weeknights. Outlaw parties in subways stations and fast food joints. A good one, called Cake, popped up at an old bakery on Avenue B and Rudy’s quality-of-lifers set their sights square on it. “NO DANCING” signs popped up all over the city. Giuliani’s cronies renewed a 79-year-old cabaret law, concocted to put chains around the throats of black Harlem jazz club owners in the Twenties, and were now using it to discriminate against Manhattan queers, trannies, hip-hoppers and ethnic parties in the boroughs. The city Fire Marshals were taken from protecting people against fires and put to harassing clubs with phony inspections at 2AM. Giuliani took the fireworks away from the Chinese New Year and sanitized Times Square so it would be just like home for all the squeaky tourists who apparently ached for more Disney in their lives.

Soon, every city agency appeared to be stacked with henchmen, and Giuliani’s culture war didn’t stop with nightlife or entertainment. He was forcing community libraries to close; museums to cut back hours. All over town, historic landmarks like the Palladium Theater were falling to the wrecking ball. New York University, a private institution originally founded to educate poor inner city kids, was allowed to run rampant through the East Village — buying up every piece of property it could get its greedy purple hands on. Throngs of arrogant, binge-drinking adolescents were being herded over the rivers and into our woods to enroll for thirty grand a year. Mommy and Daddy back in Cleveland, Fort Wayne and Nashville took out second mortgages and sent junior to New York City so he could be trendy, complain and use phrases like ‘my music’ and ‘my career’.

Throughout the city winks, nods and blind eyes turned out what is certainly the biggest case of housing fraud in New York City history. Rent regulations and housing department codes were ignored; inspectors paid off. Landlords turned seven hundred dollar-a-month tenement shitholes into two-thousand dollar-a-month ‘Renovated Sunny Apartments’ — with a cheap coat of paint, forged paperwork, and illegal alien workers.

My hunch was that Giuliani did it for spite first, profit second. A probable rat. An overgrown kid. Probably never got picked for the baseball team; probably grew up with Mommy as his only friend; probably never got laid until he was a sophomore in college—and even then probably had to pay for it. Now, the rest of us were paying for the mercy fuck he never got. Funny thing was, if he’d lowered his fists and the demolition plans from his line of vision, he might have found real friends in the very misfits he attacked—dating a cousin is certainly an acquired taste.

For similar reasons, I resented other club promoters who used the same kind of spin to crown themselves the new Kings and Queens of nightlife — everyone got in on the Me-Me-Me game. Because of AIDS, the credit for almost everything noteworthy on the downtown scene since Warhol was up for grabs — just like Giuliani snatching the credit for a drop in crime. ‘He cleaned up New York…’ said the news media and salesmen from Kansas City. Bullshit. Crime dropped everywhere because Clinton had balanced the budget and people had jobs to go to. My take on all this: Giuliani cleaned up for his pals, while petty club promoters pocketed the proceeds of mediocre nightlife and little did anyone know that all that was needed was the big bang of a terrorist attack to signal open season on Manhattan for corporate developers.

The whole fucking thing gave me a massive headache—so what’s a boy to do? Go out, booze, get laid, recover. Hamster wheel. Repeat. Until he fights a hole in the side of his own paper bag. At least me and mine were at the pinnacle of our game. Collectively we were prettier, smarter, hornier, and more glamorous than any other group in the whole tired, rotten city. We didn’t need to lip sync — we could sing. We didn’t need to search for stars, they came to SqueezeBox! on their own — through the same door as everyone else: boys in bikinis dancing next to the Steven Spielbergs of the world; trannies with new chests dancing with the naked Drew Barrymores of the world; homeless kids chatting over martinis with the Sandra Bernhards of the world; East Village drag queens like Misstress Formika, Lily of the Valley and Sherry Vine singing duets with the Deborah Harrys and Marc Almonds of the world; Michael Schmidt creating fashion with the JFK Jrs of the world — we were of the world, and the world was with us.I’d managed to climb from the foothills of North Carolina upstage to the hottest NYC scene since Max’s Kansas City. In my teen-hood Debbie and folks like Freddie Mercury and Sylvester came through my department store stereo console with stuff like dreamin’ is free, don’t stop me now, and everybody is a star. And I believed every damn word — but beliefs come with a price. For now, let’s party a little bit…

Martin Belk

Martin Belk is a writer, teacher and a former tech and producer of SqueezeBox!, the notorious New York rock n roll night club (1994 through 2004). Here, ONE Magazine presents exclusive excerpts from his forthcoming book. His chronicle is an authentic account of a downtown scene that defined an era—from Debbie Harry to Hedwig.

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