Electroboy (7 page)

From my first day at Armani, I start consigning clothing to myself—suits, jackets, sweaters, leather jackets, anything lying around the office that I consider to be a sample and that looks great on me. I’m thrilled each time I leave the office at the end of the night with new clothes, and I become addicted to acquiring
more. I’m always wondering if anybody else is doing the same thing.

October 3, 1984
.

I’m on the crosstown bus headed to work, frantic that I’ll be late. The day begins at 8:00
A.M.
, and I make it with just enough time to pick up some coffee and settle at my desk, which is stacked high with fashion magazines and covered with yellow lined legal paper on which Martina has illegibly scrawled memos and letters to be typed, unalphabetized files, and pink message slips from yesterday, which was technically only seven hours ago. My coworkers arrive in the office, dressed magnificently but looking tired and drained from working into the early hours. Martina is in her office with the door closed, but you can hear muffled Italian seeping out through the walls. Ellen, the receptionist, who is the only employee dressed in a wrinkled navy blue skirt with an unpressed white blouse sticking out, sits out in front of the elevators typing, organizing files, and shuffling papers. The understated waiting room, in which the only decoration is a white orchid on a single black table, fits the Armani mantra: minimal, minimal, minimal. Inside the office, Rafael, a public relations assistant, argues on the phone in Italian; his hair is perfectly in place, and he is dressed impeccably in his navy blue blazer and gray flannel pants. Olivia, the accountant, is busy with her calculator, her head buried in a pile of checkbooks and ledgers. Tina, the office manager, is running around from floor to floor, trying to keep everything under control, nervous that we’re not going to meet our deadline. And Clare, the office public relations consultant/stylist/gossip, walks in at around 10:30
A.M.
, because she’s been out at a party until 4:00
A.M.
She entertains us with the names and details of the celebrities she was with. “Quasi celebrities,” I say. I start typing Martina’s memos when Tina asks me to help her organize the back storage area because I’m tall enough to reach the top shelves. Martina comes out of her office with a snarl on her face and asks if I can type two letters and have them messengered as quickly as possible. I crank them out right away, she signs them, and I call a
messenger and bring them downstairs. Samples are delivered to our floor, and we need to check that everything on the inventory list has come in. I’m addicted to the frenetic pace of this place, and it fuels my mania. Martina could spit out ten more chores, and I could handle them all. In the meantime, I still haven’t gotten to her memos, and she needs them right away. But she sends me out to pick up her lunch, and when I come back she tells me that she wants me to go downtown and meet a photographer and to bring a duffel bag of clothing to a shoot. I get into a cab, find the studio on Greene Street in Soho, and deliver the clothes. When I return, Rafael is half laughing at me because it’s almost 4:00
P.M.
and I’ve been running around and haven’t sat down all day or had lunch. He orders a sandwich for me. Clare has taken a break, so I end up answering the phone for the next hour and start working on a press release for the opening. She comes back two hours later. “Where were you? You’re late, I’m pissed,” I tell her. “Sorry,” she says. Martina comes over to me and squeezes my cheeks and says something sweet in Italian. I guess I’m doing something right. It’s already dark outside, but we’re just getting ready to put together new press kits. I’m sitting on the floor in stocking feet, collating hundreds of photocopies and stuffing them into folders. Then I’m attaching labels to photographs and inserting them into the folders; this goes on into the night. Everybody else is slaving away, at their desks, while Martina is out to dinner entertaining clients. Soon people start leaving. At midnight I finally decide to call it quits. I’ve done my sixteen hours. At home I stay up for a few more hours watching television until I can fall asleep and start the cycle again in the morning.

I’m visiting Allison at Yale, the fall after my graduation, and we come back to her dorm room slightly drunk after dinner one evening. There’s a message from her mother on the answering machine about some unpaid bill. Slight intrusion. I take off my pants and T-shirt and lie down in bed and watch as she strips in front of
me. She’s laughing like this is a game. It’s kind of charming. We haven’t seen each other all week, and I’m pretty aroused. I light a joint. She asks me about places I’d like to travel to, and I tell her Iceland, China, Africa, and Australia. She thinks those places are so far away—maybe too far away, I think. The pot is making me crazy and a little paranoid. Her hair smells like smoke now, and I feel like a voyeur, like I’m watching this couple kissing, about to make love. Afterward, we go out for scrambled eggs and bacon and ice cream sundaes and start laughing hysterically when we see a napkin stuck to the waiter’s shoe as he’s passing by. It’s not really very funny at all. We finally get so tired that we go back to her room and sleep until noon.

My relationship with Allison becomes more serious, and we start spending more time together. She is finishing her final year at Yale and she spends the weekends with me in Manhattan. There are so many notations in my datebook about our incredible sex (“great night of sex,” “up all night,” “hot sex”). It seems like the perfect relationship, but it clearly isn’t. I don’t know how to communicate with her. I take on a very controlling role in the relationship, minding her day-to-day activities and taking care of her errands and appointments. I try to make her life as simple as possible, and she becomes accustomed to my omnipresence. When we first started sleeping together, she used a diaphragm, and I would do the prep work. I thought it was fun, real teamwork. But she tired of this nightly ritual, and her doctor recommended that she go on the pill. Now each night I remind her to take her pill, and if she’s too lazy, I pop one of the little peach tablets out of the case and give it to her with water. I also keep track of her menstrual cycle in my date book, so we know when to expect her next period. When it’s late, we are thrown into a panic. We’re not talking to each other; she’s crying and telling me that this time she’s sure she’s pregnant. Each time I assure her that she isn’t and show her the calculations. I suggest that we go out to dinner. It’ll happen by tomorrow morning. She’s only two days late. We go out to Nishi for sushi. She comes home and gets her period. It’s the
wasabi. I make a red star in my date book and I’ll know when she had her period so I can remind her for next time.

Years earlier, the loss of Allison’s virginity to someone else left me crushed. She was dating a guy a year younger, and I was constantly jealous. One day she called me, sounding scared and on the verge of tears. “Andy, what am I going to do?” she asked. “I think I might be pregnant.” I assured her, for some reason, that she probably wasn’t pregnant but that I would make an appointment for her to see my mother’s gynecologist, Dr. Strauss, a man in his early seventies. It was to be our secret. “Please, don’t even tell your mother,” she pleaded. “Have you told Tim?” I asked. “Not yet,” she said. The appointed day came, and we drove in my red Kharmann Ghia to Dr. Strauss’s office, which was located in his house in a very nice neighborhood in Englewood, New Jersey. I waited in the car listening to the radio for about forty-five minutes wondering what was going on inside. She walked down the steps and toward the car, got in, and looked like she was about to cry. “So, what happened?” I asked. “He examined me and took some blood and urine and I’ll know in a day or so,” she said. She reached over and gave me a big hug. “Thanks. Thanks a lot for this,” she said. The next day she called and told me she wasn’t pregnant. I was relieved, but I really didn’t want to talk to her. I was still angry that she had lost her virginity.

Several weeks after I start working at Armani, some of the Milan-based executives come to New York to check on the progress of the U.S. empire. They are busy in daily meetings with Martina, in photo sessions, and with the press, and I am at their beck and call. I order cars and limousines for them, fetch their lunch, make reservations, and pick up tickets for Broadway shows. They are staying at the Carlyle Hotel, and some of them want videos of foreign films—Jacques Tati, Luis Buñuel, Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang, and Jean Cocteau—as well as gay porn. I am sent in search of the
newest releases, with titles like
Sizing Up
and
Like a Horse
, or anything else of my choosing. I don’t question any of the requests, just take the cash and do the errands, never return the change, and always forget the receipts. I am sent on all kinds of what I call “homo missions”: picking up macho military clothing at Kaufman’s Army & Navy Store on 42nd Street, camouflage shorts and nylon vests and all kinds of undergear, jocks, bikinis, and thongs at stores on Christopher Street. This logically proceeds to being asked to track down and assemble “young men.” One of the executives is interested in meeting a model we had used on a recent shoot, and I’m asked to arrange it with his agency. I am naïve, but I know this isn’t a legitimate go-see. One of the executives asks me if I will find other “types” of models for them, and I take this to mean nonlegit types—escorts and hustlers. I find these guys in all different places, mostly through advertisements in the
New York Native
and in the theaters. I meet Scott, a tall, well-built, muscular guy with short black hair and green eyes, at the Gaiety Theater in Times Square, after his performance. He’s impressive. Handsome, with a great jawline and a hard body. They’ll like him. I tell him that there are a couple of business executives in town looking for escorts after his last show at 10:30
P.M.
and that they’ll pay him $200 an hour. I also tell him they have tons of money and plenty of time. It sounds good to him. I give him one of the executives’ names and the address and phone number of his room at the hotel. He thanks me. I can barely imagine what’s going on at 76th and Madison, but it is very busy, and the reports are never too alarming. Nothing wilder than a lot of exhibitionism, posing, and jerking off. I make arrangements to pay these boys between $200 and $500 each; sometimes they head up there a few at a time (as many as nine or ten for orgies). Most of them want to be models or actors, some lawyers and doctors, but settle for being escorts, strippers, or the most coveted position—porn stars. These boys of the adult-film business, hard to find in New York, command higher fees. One of the best known is Brent Cummings, a huge blond bisexual with enormous shoulders and a powerful chest and arms, who is handsome in a dim-witted sort of way. Brent is
twenty-five and brand-new to the big city. He performs at the Follies, a triple-X all-male theater on Seventh Avenue that features live shows and adult male films. He becomes a favorite of the Armani group.

Soon I become friendly with these working boys. Most of our contact is on the phone, but sometimes we’ll meet for a drink just to talk. Jason is a twenty-three-year-old med student at NYU, strong-looking and healthy, with blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a great smile. Once as we’re standing outside the Oak Bar at the Plaza Hotel a middle-aged man dressed in a beautifully tailored suit approaches us and asks if we’d like to join him for drinks in the bar. Jason nods at me. “Sure, we’d love to,” he says, and we follow the man into the smoky bar. We find a table, and he introduces himself as Henry Alton. He shakes Jason’s hand and then mine. “Andy,” I say. When the waiter comes, Henry orders three shots of Jack Daniel’s for the group. He leans back and takes a deep breath. “So, boys, tell me a little about your lives in New York, won’t you?” Jason tells him he’s a medical student, and I tell him I work for a well-known fashion house. He seems equally impressed by both, which I find amusing. The waiter returns with our shots, and at the count of three we down the awful-tasting whiskey. “It’s good medicine,” says Henry. “I’ll get us another.” He signals the waiter. “Now tell us a little about yourself,” Jason says. “I’m just a real estate investor from St. Louis and I get to New York as often as I can to enjoy the finer things: the museums, the theaters, the restaurants, the shopping, and the men.” “Yeah, there’s some good shopping here,” Jason says. I try to hold back my laughter. We all drink our second shot of whiskey. “Boys, would you be interested in coming back to my hotel room at the Waldorf for a little romp?” he asks. “The both of us?” I ask. He nods. “$350 for two hours, plus a tip,” he says. “I think that’s a bit low. How about $500?” asks Jason. Henry excuses himself to go to the bathroom. We order another round of drinks and are really getting drunk. It seems like the bar is closing, and Henry hasn’t come back yet. “I have a strong feeling that Henry isn’t coming back,” says Jason; “I don’t think he liked that we turned down his
offer.” The waiter comes to the table and hands us the check. It’s for $85.

Around the beginning of December, a strange combination of extreme anxiety and depression takes over me. My moods are unpredictable from day to day. Sometimes I feel fantastic for weeks, then I take a dive. Allison urges me to get professional help, and I start seeing Dr. Myron Levitt, a psychiatrist on the Upper East Side. He has paternal qualities that I like—he’s gentle and caring—but he speaks in a monotone that practically hypnotizes me. I am under extreme stress, because of the failure of the film project and my financial situation. I have tremendous amounts of energy, which I don’t know how to channel or control. I create compulsive lists of errands, possible job leads, people to call, things to buy, and doctor’s appointments. I get nothing done. There is too much swirling around in my head—I can’t contain it all in my brain.

December 16, 1984. 8:45
A.M.
Upper East Side
.

As usual, I’m early for my 9:00
A.M.
appointment with Dr. Levitt, so I stop to pick up a bagel and chocolate milk at the corner deli. I’m sitting in his waiting room staring at a horrifying piece of art hanging on the wall—a black-and-white abstract image that looks like an anorexic’s severed arms, folded. The print is slipping down into the mat. I want to mention it to him, but I keep it to myself. The waiting room is furnished with “contemporary” pieces from the seventies: a brown knotty couch, a chrome arched lamp, glass-and-chrome end tables, and two wooden chairs with cushions. Nothing matches. I’m not comfortable here. It isn’t clean enough for me. I have to work out my issues in a clean environment. I don’t understand what’s causing how I feel every day I wake up, whether it’s anxiety or depression, and I feel like they need to operate on me. I don’t want to open myself up and get infected by his psychoanalysis in this shabby office and die on his fake Oriental rug. I’d prefer to be lying naked, covered by just a sheet, on a
steel table in a big white room with a white ceramic floor and bright lights, talking to my psychiatrist. The door to his office opens. “Come in,” says Dr. Levitt. I sit in my assigned seat, the tan leather-and-chrome couch, in my customary position—my legs spread-eagle, leaning backward. I’m still drinking my chocolate milk. Dr. Levitt sits about five feet away from me, notebook in hand. He smiles, remains silent, and looks at me to begin the session. It’s a contest between psychiatrist and patient. I stare blankly at him, but after about thirty seconds I start laughing. Patient loses. Dr. Levitt doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t laugh because he doesn’t know what’s so funny and because he has no sense of humor. There is another silence. To ease the tension, I give in quickly and tell him that I have nothing new to talk about and that I’m just as anxious and depressed as I was the week before. His therapy obviously isn’t working. Or
I’m
not working at my therapy. As I speak, he looks down at his pad, takes notes, and mumbles, which annoys me because I’m not sure that he’s really listening or that what he’s writing on that pad is even about me. Then he looks up, leans forward, and asks me, “Andy, how do you feel today?” I pull my legs together, sit up straight, clasp my hands, and think about this one. I’m insulted because he knows the answer, but I give him a response anyway. “Like the fucking pressure in my head is building up and is going to explode any minute,” I tell him. He presses me further. “And what exactly does that feel like?” he asks. I refuse to answer and slump back into my original spread-eagle position. He takes a sip of his coffee and waits for my response. This session is never going to end. He attempts to bring our focus back to the issues we’ve been discussing over the last few weeks. “Is your relationship with Allison in any way like your relationship with your mother or sister?” he asks me. “Sometimes,” I say. “But I don’t feel like talking about that now.” He wants me to update him on my financial problems and career plans. But to me this is missing the point; I’m not seeing him to problem-solve. I’m suffering and I’m withholding information and am not very open about the derailment that is really going on in my daily life. I’ve lost my golden-boy self-image, and I’m not about to admit it
with this simpleton. And more important, I’m not able to articulate the intensity of what’s going on inside my brain anyway. So I just sit on the tan couch staring at the ugly brown and blue rug hoping he will magically help me understand the pressure I’m feeling. I take a tissue from the table in front of me and pretend to blow my nose; I try to throw it in the garbage can but miss, so I have to go pick it up. I look at my watch. “You have more time,” Dr. Levitt says. The next thing I know he’s talking to me about narcissistic personality disorder. “Can we save that for next week?” I ask him. “Fine, it’s your time,” he responds in an easy manner, which makes me feel rather guilty. I stand up and walk out of his office, passing by his next patient, a frightened-looking girl in her midtwenties, and a woman I take to be her mother, anxiously awaiting their appointment.