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Monday, January 28, 2013

The Devil You Know Part 10


Joe Romeo had a shop on Lark Street where he sold knickknacks; he lived above his shop and could access his home through a back door. I had a 2 pm meeting with him and dressed as nicely as I could. I was told that he was looking for models for a book he was working on.

Joe answered the door on the first ring. He was handsome with his dark Italian looks in his little white tank peeking out through a cut up short sleeve flannel shirt. His arms were strong looking and he flexed a muscle as he placed his hand on the door frame. He was impeccably groomed with a little 70s porn moustache, twinkling blue eyes that had just a hint of mischief and he was wearing tight blue jeans with black work boots and had a body that clearly lived at the gym. He smiled, cooked his head, put out his hand and said “Geoff, You’re much more handsome than I thought you would be.” His eyes twinkled and a smile crossed his face. He was charming and I could tell that I was not the first that he turned his charm on with.

Joe motioned for me to follow him into his house. “Can I get you something to drink?” he asked holding the door open for me. “Just water,” I responded. Joe pointed to one of the light brown leather couches that were separated by a coffee table. “Of course,” he said and then walked into what I was sure was the kitchen.

Quickly, looking around the room, I saw frames filled with pictures of muscle men they decorated the walls, the pictures sat on bookshelves, in piles on the coffee table and on the sideboard. It was dark in his apartment, the curtains were drawn over the windows but I could see the light peeking through the sides. The furniture was early Art Deco and a full ashtray sat on the coffee table, its ashes had spilled over the side and lightly dusted the table.

Joe walked back into the room, placed the water on a coaster in front of me, pulled out a cigarette. He lit up while sitting down, his eyes twinkled again. “Do you know what I do?” he asked his eyes showing that mischievous twinkle.

“You are a photographer and you’re looking for models for a book that you are doing?” I responded reaching for the water. It was suddenly hot in here. “I am,” he said reaching under the coffee table for something. He fumbled for a moment then pulled out several photo albums that all had varying thicknesses to them and placed them on the table. He opened the first book and slid it towards me. The pictures in the album were all soft porn and the models all had something over their privates, a hat here a drape there. “I shoot for various magazines and you would look great in their pages,” Joe said pushing another photo album in front of me. Each album started to show more skin and less soft porn.

I pulled a cigarette out of my pack and lit up; it was getting hot in here! I took another sip of water and said “Do you think so?””Be cool,” I told myself. I was learning to work the game as well, let’s hear where this offer was going. “Can I get you a drink?” Joe asked leaning forward on the couch. “I’m fine with water,” I said thumbing through the books.

“I would like to shoot you in your own setting,” Joe said suddenly getting back to business, “The pay is good and it’s a one day shoot.” “Can you stand up for me?” he asked dragging on his cigarette. I placed the book I was looking at on the coffee table and slowly stood up. “How tall are you?”he asked looking me up and down. “Six feet,” I responded. “Can you take your clothes off for me?” Joe asked waving his hand as if to make my clothes disappear. “I’m sorry?” I asked again. “Can you take your clothes off?” he said waving his hand again. For some reason I hadn’t thought that this would be part of it. “Sure,sure” I said putting out my cigarette trying not to seem nervous. Joe leaned back on the couch and looked at me. I stepped on the back of my shoes and slipped one foot out at a time, and then I reached down and took off my socks.

I could feel the sweat forming on the back of my neck as I reached down and grabbed the bottom of my shirt. I pulled in up in one quick jerk and over my head and threw it still turned inside out onto the couch. Joe smiled and motioned with his chin for me to remove my pants. I grab my belt buckle and yank it back and the top of my pants slide to my knees, bending over, I push them to my ankles. Joe pauses for a moment as I step out of my pants.

I look at him and he motions again with his chin “Your underpants as well,” he says through whispered breath. I turn and face  the couch with my back to him, my stomach starts to lurch, this doesn’t feel right at all. “Your underpants as well,” he says a little louder this time.

I hook my thumbs in the front of my waistband and slide them to the floor and step out of them. “Turn around,” he whispers. I stand frozen. “Turn around,” he whispers again. I swallow hard and slowly began to turn towards him. “Nice, nice,” he says in that whispery tone. I stand facing him with my arms at my sides; I never look  in his eyes, I’m not really here. “Now……I….need…..you….to……get…..an…..erection, “he says slowly pausing on each word, I continue to look at the ceiling.

To be continued……

Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent. 

Monday, January 21, 2013

The Devil You Know Part 9


It would be twenty years before I would learn the truth about what really happened to the Gemini Jazz Cafe. Two days after the fire was put out, the insurance company refused to pay for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons was that the fire started in two places and they couldn’t determine what the accelerant was and the second reason had something to do with the smoke and fire alarms. 

Rumor circled through the community and through Albany, which is how we got our news. No one knew what had happened for sure and David had gone out of town for two days for some emergency.
The staff of the Gemini Jazz Café, had not been paid in about two weeks and I had officially started working there. 

Jack, pipe in hand given me a piece of advice, so I had told the owner of Balloon-Age to fuck herself. Jack had heard me talk about how I was being booked repeatedly to do nothing but stripping with a balloon delivery. “Seriously”, I told Jack, “I wouldn’t have hired me as a stripper for bachelorette parties.” Clearly when I showed up, I was a skinny, scrawny extremely gay kid who would put his all into it. The problem was that I was a nervous wreck and couldn’t wait for it to be over.

The only good news that came out of this was that I never had to produce my nonexistent driver’s license to the owner of Balloon-Age. I had bills to pay and no money. Jack and Frankie were allegedly arrested on their boat in Florida during the week and maintained that they had nothing to do with the fire. There was no way that anyone was getting paid.

Unbeknownst to me, Bill M. would be on his way home from the hospital soon. I was screwed and I needed a plan. The next day, I went to the SUNY Albany Art Department and start to work as a nude model for their advanced drawing classes. It was easy; I could start that very day.

No one tells me what to do or how to do it, so I wing it. I’m wearing a tiny robe with nothing on underneath. At the front of the room was a little stage and the chairs surrounded it. Students were already sitting there with blank paper on their easels as I spot the teacher. She smiles and motions me to the stage.

I   turn my back on the students, drop my robe and pose without moving for about 15 minutes. After the third fifteen minute pose, the teacher kindly come over and asks me if I wouldn’t mind facing front for “at least one” of my poses. We negotiate for about five minutes and I get to sit in a folding chair if I will face front.

During my legs crossed, sitting on a folding chair pose, I began to think. This was money and I needed it and it was money and it paid bills and got me things that I needed. Soon I began to ask around about other jobs and looked in the help wanted ads in the back of the paper. I walked up and down Lark Street looking for a job. 

One day I walked into a gay card store that was located in a basement building and asked if they knew of any jobs. From behind a small row of poppers, the desk clerk tells me that I should meet his friend, a photographer named Joe Romeo.

To be continued……

Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent. 

Monday, January 14, 2013

The Devil You Know Part 8


I am completely shocked by what I see as I slowly walk into the room. Jack is sitting completely naked in a chair, his legs are crossed and a pipe hangs out of the side of his mouth and he has a devilish glint in his eyes. David is also sitting in a chair but has nothing more than a pair of underpants on.

I feel like Rosemary from Rosemary’s Baby, when she enters the Witches party and confirms that her baby has been fathered by the Devil. I don’t want anyone to talk to me it’s a lot to take in.

“Hi Ann,” I say pretending she has all her clothes on as I walk around her. Frankie still has the crop extended in her arm towards me. “No thanks,” I tell her and just that moment Mark walks into the room in a harness. “What the hell is going on in here?” my brain asks. I don’t even know how to process this and I decide that the best way is to excuse myself and get out of here.

Jack stands up, his little belly covers his penis and I realize that I just glanced down at it so I quickly that I switch my eyes up and notice his handlebar moustache is curled up on each side. He still has that twinkle in his eye and the smoke from his pipe, circles his head like a bow. I move my eyes to the table that split Jack and there is a pile of a white substance that I know is cocaine. It is piled high on a mirror with additional lines and a straw separated off to one side of the mirror. A smile crosses David’s face and Jack takes a step towards me. This is a little too much to put together in my brain and I take a step backwards from this little group. For a brief moment the thought to stay crosses my mind but I am not comfortable and need time to think on it. I do what I do best when confronted with a situation that makes me uncomfortable, I run. I just turn around, take a step around Mark in his harness, Frankie in her SS uniform and Ann chained to the wall and hit the stairs running.

I don’t stop until I make my way back to Jay Street and enter my apartment. It is exactly how I left it and Bill M. still hasn’t returned and we haven’t heard anything in a couple of weeks about his progress. David and I are supposed to officially move in together and I have begun the packing. I want to give Bill M. plenty of time to find a new roommate before I leave but I haven’t even had that conversation, I don’t want to visit him in the psych ward and tell him my plans.

It’s hours later that David appears at my apartment, he wants to apologize for freaking me out, everyone is sorry that I wasn’t told or asked in advance and Jack and Frankie want me to come back later for a drink. I tell him that “I will think about it,” but I know I will. I don’t return that night but several days later I do. Jack teases me about how I ran out and how if I stayed he would be gentle. Frankie comes downstairs and sits on the side of me as David stands behind me. We form a twisted, bizarre little family who at this moment need to be in each other’s lives. It’s weird when I see Ann but she just shrugs and says “A moment in time.” Soon David is over at The Gemini Jazz Café on a nightly and most of the day basis, he will come home and five minutes later its Jack or Frankie who need something and David is back there. When Frankie calls the house because Jack has punched, kicked or slapped her when he is drunk, David’s there to hear Jack apologize for doing it. I start to watch a slide in David’s behavior; he is constantly on beck and call for Jack. I believe that he cares deeply for both of them and has tried to talk Frankie out of staying again and again; he is also there to protect Frankie. How do you get someone to leave who won’t?

Five of the six weeks are almost up for Bill M. when I walk up the block to go to work at the Gemini Jazz Café as I get closer the smell of burning wood fills my nostrils and smoke hangs in the air. As I get closer I realize that there is no building left on the corner of Dove and Madison. Over the next three hours I am about to learn that the Gemini Jazz Café has burned down, the fire started in two places and the owners have left via boat for somewhere.

To be continued……
Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent. 

Monday, January 7, 2013

The Devil You Know Part 7


I became fast friends with everyone in the cast and was totally excited about seriously making my life in the theatre, even though it was community theatre, I was in another show. Heaven Can Wait was interesting to watch from the wings for the first week and then I started to get bored. I was hoping to be discovered as dead body number 3, drowning victim, by someone in the audience within the first five minutes I was out there. I was hoping to get a chance at a second show somewhere. I was always trying to get everyone’s attention in the cast and lived just to be onstage. Fifteen minutes before the show ended, me and the other dead bodies would run to the dressing room and reapply our corpse make up for the curtain call. We had to look freshly dead as the curtain came down. One night after the show the director pulled me aside and reminded me that corpses don’t wear rouge. I reminded her that I was freshly dead. She reminded me that what she said went.

Two of the friends I made at Albany Civic Theatre were Ann and Iris; they both played maids in the show and were very close friends. Iris had a twisted sense of humor and a wicked laugh that came quick and fast. Ann was a little more low key and had a laugh that reminded me of a fog horn, if you made her laugh she would bleat like a goat and then snort it back in. Iris loved to make Ann laugh onstage and we would often draw attention to ourselves in the wings while Ann was out there. Iris was a little dizzy and referred to herself as a “Total Blonde.” Even though her blond hair came from a box and she was a little zaftig, she adopted what she believed was the proper behavior to go with her hair color. Iris even went as far to adopt the voice of Marilyn Monroe, not only onstage but in life as well. So many times I would tell her that I didn’t understand what she said in a breathy tone, that she would repeat it in her native Bronx tone.

Ann on the other hand wanted to be a serious actress, which was her goal in life. Standing at Four foot ten with a face that only a mother could love she cut a shapely figure with a tiny waist. Her ass on the other hand was enormous and would often leave the stage five minutes after she did, but it was a spectacular ass. We would joke that it had its own dressing room.

When Iris and I were not on stage we would hang out in the costume shop and try things on. Rumor had it that the costume shop was haunted along with the theatre. It was a converted old firehouse and the closet in the costume shop lead to a tower. There was a metal ladder attached to the inside of the closet that leads to the roof and it would slightly bang on the wall during a windy day. If we listened close we could always hear the ghosts of dead fireman calling to us, or at least that’s what we thought. One game we would play in the costume shop while the show was going on was to go into the closet with a costume in your hand, turn out the lights and try to put it on. We never made it and we were sure that someone was in the closet with us; we would end up scrambling to get out.

Iris had a roommate named Pam. Pam looked very much like Pam Greer in her afro phase and she had exotic records that she was always listening to. One album cover that we sneaked a look at had a naked effeminate guy totally on the cover. The title of the album was Prince but we thought Prince would be better titled Princess. Pam would tell us to shut the fuck up whenever we talked about Prince.

An apartment opened up downstairs from Pam and Iris and Ann moved in. Everything was great until Ann took out a restraining order against Iris because she believed that Iris was stalking her. I knew that Iris was completely consumed with Ann but did not know that many times Iris would climb down the fire escape and sneak into Ann’s house when she wasn’t around. One night I spent the night at Iris and Pam’s. We tied a glove to a broom handle lowered it out the window to Ann’s window where we taped on her window. Iris told me that she wanted to scare Ann and Ann thinking that Iris was breaking in to her house called the Albany Police. Five minutes later just as I was pretending to be Linda Blair on Iris’ bed the police arrived. I was bouncing myself into the air pretending I was possessed when the bell rang. Iris began to panic when the police announced through the intercom that they were here. Iris looked at me and I quickly told her to take off her clothes. I followed suit, stripped my clothes off and messed up our hair and pulled the sheets from the bed and wrapped them around ourselves. I told her to tell them that we were having sex and that was the noise that Ann heard.

Ann screamed “He’s Gay!” when she overheard Iris’ excuse for the noise. “And you’re crazy!” Iris screamed down the stairs. The cops clearly didn’t want to get involved, told us to keep the noise down and returned to their patrol car. From there they drove to the top of the hill where they had a direct view into the front window of Iris’ apartment. We came up with an idea as we watched them with the lights off. I stepped in front of the window and dropped my sheet, and then Iris came to meet me and stand naked in the window with me. The cops believing our story quickly drove off.

Ann was a good friend but I also enjoyed torturing her a little because she was always so dramatic with every story. I introduced her to Jack and Frankie and she became part of our little group. One night I went to get David from work and was told by the bartender that everyone was upstairs at Jacks house. I climbed the back staircase and knocked on the door. No one answered but I could hear people in there. I pushed the door opened and stepped into the room. The sounds were coming from the living room. As I turned the corner I saw Frankie wearing an SS Uniform, Ann was chained naked to a wall and Frankie was beating her with a riding crop. When Frankie sees me she holds out the riding crop and asks if I want a turn.

To be continued……
Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life". It can not be reprinted in part or whole without his written consent. 

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