Why Aren't You Smiling? (22 page)

“What?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

The man dragged me onto the dance floor then released my hands and began swiveling his body. Out of politeness, I tried to dance but the spirit of the music eluded me. I'd danced before, alone in my room, but this music was different, so fast, so smooth, so relentless. The lyrics were utterly different, too. There were no symbolic puzzles, no horses with no name, no buying of stairways to heaven, no one tin soldier riding away. As I clumsily flailed my body, I was seized with a wave of nausea.

“Child, you look positively
green,
are you gonna be OK?” asked the man in a voice that was musical, ironic, and concerned, all at the same time. To be heard over the music he'd put his face right up to mine and I could smell something minty on his breath. This somehow caused the nausea in my throat to solidify. I raced towards the men's room. Inside the gleaming, tiled space I found the one stall unoccupied and ducked inside just in time to spew a trickle of vomit into the toilet.

“Baby, you is in some condition, isn't you?” I queasily stood up, turned around, to see the man from the dance floor. He stood at the stall's door, hands on hips, shaking his head with pursed lips. “Poor thing with yo head in the toilet. I suspects you is what we call an ‘ingénue' and has not yet learned to drink yer likker like a man yet, am I right?”

“I'm OK, I just feel a little queasy.”

“Well, not to worry. My name is Jordan. You can call me Jordy, and I'm here to help.” He flashed something halfway between a smile and a smirk. Despite his athletic clothes and facial hair – he sported long sideburns that connected with a droopy mustache – I sensed something exceedingly un-male about Jordy, though it wasn't really feminine either.

“I'm OK now,” I croaked weakly.

Jordy leaned past me into the stall and flushed the toilet with a look of exaggerated disdain. “The fruits of wickedness do not always smell particularly delicious.” He minced out of the stall and leaned against the tiled wall as I rinsed my mouth with water from the sink faucet. “Is this the first time you have set your tender little foot inside this here den of iniquity? I can't say that I rightly recall seeing you before.”

The throbbing in my head began to subside. “Yeah, I wasn't planning to come here. I was out walking…”

Jordy chuckled. “And you just happened to find yourself in a gay bar.”

“I'm on a quest,” I explained. “Trying to gain wisdom by experiencing the illusory world of suffering and striving… what we Buddhists call Samsara.”

Jordy's eyes rolled heavenward. “Now I've heard everything.”

His suspicion annoyed me. “See, you can find one sort of wisdom by withdrawing from the world, another kind by living in it. I want to experience the world.”

Jordy's eyebrows shot up. “The whole thing?”

“And, and… to make sense of suffering I had to be with the downtrodden here in the city, like, you know, when Siddhartha left the palace to wander among the people.”

Jordy nearly gasped. “You aren't joking, are you? You're what, sixteen, seventeen?”

“Time is an illusion.”

Jordy fanned himself with his hand as if he were overheating. “Lord, have mercy!”

I felt the need to explain myself further so as not to sound ridiculous. “I'm hoping to detach myself from desire. I know it's not something you can do in one lifetime; I'll probably have to get reincarnated a bunch of times before I achieve Nirvana.”

Jordy stared at me with an expression of pure shock. “I see.”

“I guess I should try and understand this place. Siddhartha spent a long time with Kamala, a courtesan who taught him the art of love. Physical love, I mean, not spiritual all-encompassing Love. I used to be a Christian and very into Love, but now I'm just trying to detach. This place here is for gays, right?”

“You got that right, Baby. This here disco is for gay homosexual faggots.”

The smells of the bathroom, disinfectant, urine, and vomit began nauseating me. “I think I'd better get outside. Thank you for the, uh… what were they? Poppers?”

“Yeah. By the way, what's your name?”

“I'm Leonard. It's been very nice meeting you.”

I gave Jordy a little wave then marched out of the bathroom, wiggled my way through the crowd and out the front door. The music was almost as loud outside as it was inside and half a dozen men stood against the front of the bar, scanning the street in front of them with hungry eyes. I stood for a second, wondering in which direction the bus terminal lay. My parents would be wondering where I was.

Jordy popped out of the door. “Going home so soon? Did you at least get to have a little fun in there before Veera Vomit made her cameo?”

“I wasn't looking for fun,” I explained. “Fun is just meaningless sensory stimulation.”

“If you don't have any fun,” said Jordy. “You turn into a mean, bitchy ol' witch and make everyone around you miserable.”

“I'm trying to chose the path of compassion instead of the path of selfish gratification,” I explained.

A clean-shaven man in his early twenties, just my height only stocky and cinnamon colored, ambled over to us. “Well, Miss Jordy, what have you found here?”

“Wayward waif,” said Jordy.

The man looked me over and frowned. “Jordy, he's too young. Throw him back.”

Jordy grew mock indignant. “This poor chile was retchen up somethin' horrible in that foul, stanky ol' bathroom in there. Someone had to see he got out to the street safely. Cradle-robbing was the very last thing on my mind.” Jordy put a hand on my shoulder in a proprietary manner. Unused to friendly physical contact, I had to suppress a flinch.

“Just doing your Christian duty, huh?”

Jordy grew indignant. “Hardly!” He raised his nose imperiously. “It has always struck me as a great tragedy that any lion should ever go to bed hungry when the world is so very full of juicy, delicious Christians.”

“I wonder what the penalty for statutory rape is in this state?” Jordy's friend asked. “Back in Texas where I come from, they just shoot you.”

“I hear tell crackers'll shoot you for the sheer fun of it,” replied Jordy. He pointed at his pal. “This creature with the bedroom eyes here is Miguel, which is Mexican for Michael.” Miguel's eyes were indeed bedroomy, wide and possessed of long, dark lashes that fluttered in a manner I found slightly hypnotizing.

My scalp tingled as I squeaked out a little “Hi.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Miguel, moving out of the doorway to make room for a man staggering from the bar. The man's eyes were glazed, his brow sweaty, and his balance so off-kilter he immediately walked into the wall.

Miguel rolled his eyes. “Miss Timothy has such a zest for living.”

“Zest for Quaaludes more like it,” Jordy replied. He turned to Timothy. “Girl, pull yourself together! Go home and sleep it off.”

Timothy looked up and squinted. “Would one of you kind gentlemen call me a taxi?”

Jordy, Miguel, and three of the men leaning against the bar simultaneously roared, “You're a taxi!”

“Walked right into that one, just like the wall,” laughed Jordy. He stepped into the street and hailed a passing Yellow Cab. Timothy was lifted, then pushed into it by good Samaritans, and whisked away.

“Will he be OK?” I wondered out loud, thinking of the numerous educational films in which wayward youngsters were felled by a pill or a puff of the wrong drug.

“He leaves that way every night,” explained Miguel. “I told him, ‘Honey, your key to social success is Big Entrances, not Big Exits,' but he won't listen.”

“Uh, uh, uh! These chirren ain't got the sense God gave a horsefly,” snapped Jordy with a censorious shake of the head.

“Tell it, Mammy!” said Miguel.

It suddenly hit me that Jordy was imitating Hattie McDaniel, the lovable maid from any number of ancient movies I'd seen on TV. This struck me as being in questionable taste, but Miguel was nowhere near white and he didn't seem offended so I let it go.

With Timothy gone, both men turned their attention back to me. “You know, Miguel, Leonard here is on some sorta highly spiritual quest. I think he might be a saint in training.”

Jordy's slightly sarcastic tone was irritating. I turned to Miguel and tried to explain. “I'm trying to understand The World so I can transcend its snares and illusions and find Peace. I used to be a Christian, a Cathar actually, but that didn't work out so now I'm more of a Buddhist. Or maybe I should say I'm interdenominational. I believe that no one faith has a monopoly on wisdom.”

Jordy stage-whispered, “I think he's a virgin.”

“I don't want to get wrapped up in the material, sensual world,” I continued, ignoring Jordy. “I'm seeking a higher plane.”

Miguel shot me an undecided look. “OK, that's different. I can dig that. You've got your own trip going on.”

I felt relieved. Miguel understood me. Feeling reckless, I asked, “What do you think the meaning of life is?”

Miguel thought for a moment, an operation that twisted his face into a mask of puzzlement. “I never really considered it. Well, that's not true. My parents were Catholic. I went to church, took communion.”

“Are you still a Catholic?”

“Catholic?” Miguel sounded perplexed. Suddenly his eyes turned to the door then back to me, widened by a theatrical expression of delight. “Oh my God, they're playing
Jungle Boogie!
We gotta dance!” He grabbed my hand and darted through the door, towing me inside. On the crowded dance floor, Miguel released me and instantly started shimmying around like a fish out of water, but somehow (amazingly) in time with the music.

I tried to mirror Miguel's moves, but my body remained jerkily out of sync. He'd step to the left, but by the time I followed, he was already stepping to the right. He'd clap, spin, throw his arms up, and return to his original position while I was still on the clap. I found it impossible to keep up without knowing what steps were coming next – if indeed he wasn't just making it all up as he went along. Still, I wanted to experience Dance, so I tried and tried, growing ever more frantic and clumsy until finally I stumbled over my own leaden feet, almost falling over. My embarrassment nearly propelled me off the dance floor as it had on so many sports fields, but something (perhaps the marionette master) made me stay. Miguel must have noticed my distress because he shouted out over the music, “Close your eyes!” I hesitated, fearing that I'd fall over completely or crash into someone. Miguel pointed to his own eyes and blinked several times to encourage me.

I closed my eyes and all was dark except for the occasional flash of color from the blinking disco lights through my eyelids. The music, so loud it throbbed through my muscles and bones, became my world. The male lead vocal growled and grunted about something called Jungle Boogie while the back-up singers advised me – nay,
commanded
me – to get down, get down. For a short, dark eternity I flailed randomly, praying I'd miraculously acquire the ability to dance by osmosis. I couldn't concentrate though as my mind was flirting with delirium, a sense of utter unreality. Even in a day full of so much unexpected strangeness, to find myself dancing in a disco struck me as astoundingly weird.

To make sure I wasn't dreaming, I pinched myself and opened my eyes. There was Miguel, suave as ever, dancing away as a new set of girls sang, “Fly, Robin, Fly! Right up to the sky!” I then chanced to glance down and was shocked to discover that my arms and legs had fallen into the rhythm of the song, each making one swift, satisfying motion for every beat. Somehow my body had figured out this dancing business on its own. I was, for all intents and purposes,
gettin' funky.

The music went on and on, each song seamlessly blending into the next, but instead of growing weary with exertion, my limbs became lighter and lighter. My mood, too, seemed to acquire a sort of weightlessness. As I danced through the next song and the next, my head emptied the way I'd always tried to make it during my attempts at meditation, leaving nothing but an animal contentment. There were no thoughts of God, the Truth, Samsara, Siddhartha, karma, Love, Rick, my parents, or the kids at school. There was just me, slightly delirious but wildly happy, and I was dancing in boogie wonderland.

O
h, he's doing the Lord's work, that's for sure!” Rick suppressed a grimace. The elderly parishioner, Claire, was talking about President Reagan again.

“Communists, gays, and godless liberals, he'll be putting them in their place.” Claire's mouth contorted into a sadistic smirk.

Rick spoke mildly. “Remember, now… Christ beseeched us to love our enemies.”

Claire scowled. “Well, yes, of course.” She lumbered into her maroon Cadillac Seville. “See you next Sunday, if not before!” She and her husband waved and drove off.

Finally,
thought Rick. His first real job as a pastor was putting him in contact with a whole new class of people, and they could be a trial. He stared at the church – his church – an ugly box of tan bricks with a small stained glass window depicting The Feeding of The Multitude. Rick never caught sight of it without uncharitably reflecting on his congregation's gluttony. No gathering transpired without mountainous platters of cold cuts, sandwiches, muffins, casseroles, cookies, cakes, crullers, and Jell-O molds full of canned fruit and marshmallows. Now that he'd reached his thirties (early, but still), it was harder to keep off the pounds. He made the effort, though. He'd already lost the delicious freedom of not knowing what the morrow would hold. Losing his looks too would just about finish him off.

Rick climbed into his faded green Toyota Tercel, baking with summer heat, and drove to his modest apartment. He wanted to nap, but his evening plans had him too excited. Instead, he took a long shower that cleared his mind of the day. Afterwards, staring in the bathroom mirror, he barely recognized the man before him with his short hair and careful beard. He flashed a smile. At least that had stayed the same, and though he knew he was indulging the sin of vanity, he had to admit he was still awfully attractive despite the nascent crow's feet appearing at the corners of his eyes.

Once clad in a casual outfit of black jeans and tight, white tee-shirt, Rick drove for ninety minutes towards the setting sun, leaving the inland suburb where he was a Man of God for the city, where he was no one at all. He parked in a district on the edge of town devoted to auto repair shops, warehouses, and seedy clubs. Nowhereland. He looked up and down the street and found it deserted except for some guys dressed head to toe in black leather. He pulled a lighter out of his glove compartment and a joint out from under his seat. A few puffs later, he stepped into the balmy night and strolled around the corner and into his favorite hangout, a dance club favored by a decidedly younger crowd.

The place was pitch dark and half empty, just how he liked it. Who needed crowds? He walked up to the bar and ordered a whiskey, which he downed quickly. The floatiness of the pot mixed with the mellowness from the drink, and he started feeling pretty good. He looked around at the kids. The latest fad was New Wave, and they were all trying to look as decadent and artificial as possible with their shiny clothes, dyed hair, and earrings. Some of the boys even wore eyeliner. The music, too, was decadent and artificial, an abrasive mix of synthesizers and drum machines with tortured vocals: Tainted Love! We fade to grey! Love, love will tear us apart, again!

He scanned the crowd, looking for angels. Being older – a Methuselah of 31 – it would be up to him to make the first move. He'd also have to buy his quarry a drink and flatter him shamelessly, all without seeming desperate or creepy. Hard work, though rewarding. He wandered over and sat on the bench nearest the dance floor where a handful of guys were jumping around like water on a hot greased skillet. One, a slightly chunky guy of about twenty with bleached blond hair swooping over his face like a waterfall, stared right at him. The lad wasn't really cute, so Rick didn't return the gaze. When the song ended, though, the boy walked over to the bench wearing a tentative look.

“Rick?”

Rick froze. Who was this kid? The whole point of driving into the city was to avoid being recognized. Could this be some parishioner's wayward child who had scoped him out? If word of his proclivities got around, he'd lose his job. Since the boy was clearly
that way
himself, perhaps he wouldn't turn him in. Rick forced a smile he didn't feel. “Hello.”

“It's me, Leonard.” The boy's bright, eager voice brimmed with an innocence that struck Rick as inappropriate for a bar. The kid was probably stone cold sober.

“Hey, Leonard.” Rick ran through his parishioners in his mind, but couldn't place him. “Good to see you.”

“You don't remember?” The young man's searching eyes were making Rick uncomfortable.

Rick smiled helplessly.

“I visited Pleroma. In Oregon. Remember? You baptized me
naked”
Leonard giggled in a way that suggested this was now a funny story to tell at parties.

A spark of recognition lit up Rick's face. Oh, yeah, what year was that again? Unbelievable. “Little Lenny?!”

“Yeah!” Leonard laughed with relief. He hadn't wanted to be forgotten. “I guess I don't look the same, do I? But neither do you! What're you up to these days?”

Rick's mind, though logy with pot and booze,managed to dredge up with a few faded snapshots of Lenny's brief, insignificant appearance in his life. It seemed like a lifetime ago. “Yeah, um, I'm the pastor of a small church, out in the suburbs. Way out.”

“Thought you didn't go in for churches.” Leonard looked at him, tilting his head.

“I'm afraid there's not much call for itinerant hippie preachers these days.” Rick found himself wanting to confess. “These people can be total assholes. Judgmental, bigoted, close-minded.”

“That's a drag,” nodded Leonard.

“It works my nerves, but you know… I figure I might actually do some good preaching out there, maybe give them something to think about besides keeping up with the Joneses.”

Leonard grinned. “Whatever happened to the Forever Family?”

“Marjorie is still up in Oregon, the rest…” Rick shrugged and looked away. “Who knows?”

One of Leonard's friends, a hot little number in a leopard-print sleeveless tee-shirt, glanced over at Rick with a take-me-I'm-yours look. Rick returned the look with a seductive leer then forced himself to turn back to Leonard, who was staring down at his pointy black shoes.

Leonard glanced up at Rick and squinted like he was deep in thought. “Maybe this isn't polite to ask, but… were you for real with the religious stuff? Do you actually believe in God and Jesus and all that?”

Rick guessed Leonard had been wondering about this for a long time. “For me, religion is a way of helping people find Love. I definitely believe the world needs more Love.”

Leonard looked him straight in the eye and asked, “And the boys?”

Rick shuddered slightly from the directness of the question. “What can I say? I like boys.” The uncomfortably unspoken
just not you
inspired Rick to change the subject. “How about you, Lenny? How are you doing?”

“I'm OK. I'm at State, majoring in art history.”

“Well, that's fine.” Rick instantly regretted the statement and the tone. He sounded like a parson instead of his old self, which is what he suddenly, desperately wanted to be.

“I want to be a Dadaist when I grow up.” Leonard smiled to let Rick know this was a joke.

Rick couldn't quite remember what a Dadaist was, so he changed the subject again. “You were such a serious little guy. Always looking for answers. Did you ever find any?”

Leonard giggled again. “No, I think I just forgot all the questions.” The song changed and Leonard jerked to attention like a dog hearing a whistle while the kids on the dance floor all squealed. “Gotta go. Great seeing you, Rick. Take care, OK?” Leonard bolted off to join his pals.

Rick was surprised to see that Leonard, despite being chunky, was amazingly light on his feet, skipping and twirling to the music with a capricious disregard for the law of gravity. As the boy danced, his expression changed from giddy delight to pure rapture, and a smile of startling luminosity spread across his face. Suddenly feeling old and out of place, Rick wondered if he'd ever been that happy himself.