Lesson #1
THE BOSS DOESN’T LOVE YOU
It is true that before moving to New York City in May of 1985, I turned my back on a six-figure trust fund. I was seventeen, and I wanted to be able to lay sole claim to my successes and failures. My parents considered me foolish, stubborn, and, worse yet, ungrateful. “You’ll regret it,” my mother told me. Yet I didn’t miss the money— at first.
Here’s what I do wish I’d brought with me when I boarded a Greyhound bus in Indianapolis bound for the city: a working knowledge of how to operate a laundry machine; experience writing checks and balancing a checkbook; familiarity with padlocks and dead bolts; the rudimentary cooking skills to fix a grilled cheese sandwich without setting off a smoke detector; and the ability to sense when I was being hustled.
Savings from summer jobs and a lifetime of birthday money left me with $2,327 to my name. I burned through it quicker than I should have by renting a room by the week at the Chelsea Hotel. I had read about the storied hotel in Rolling Stone. Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and Madonna all called the place home at one time or another. I never saw any of them in the halls.
I did cross paths with heroin addicts who dozed off on the furniture in the lobby. I shared elevator rides with agitated schizophrenics. I met a pimp who got quite hostile when I declined his proposal that I should become a sex worker and allow him to represent me. Despite my longing to make friends, I kept to myself.
The best thing to come my way at the Chelsea Hotel was Gregory Yester. He was gorgeous. Haitian. Six foot two. Three years older than me. Broad shoulders. Dark skin. Hazel eyes. Dimples so deep that they showed even when he wasn’t smiling. Gregory said whatever was on his mind, which is a habit that society punishes, but I found it exhilarating to be around. He helped bash the repression of prep school right out of me.
Gregory approached me while I was checking my mailbox one night, and he was shameless in his appeal. “Can I borrow five bucks? I owe my dealer, and listen, lil man, do me this solid, and I’ll not only pay you back, I’m gonna roll you the best fuckin’ joint you ever put between your sweet lips.”
“Okay, let me see what I’ve got,” I said, pulling my leather wallet from my pocket, opening it in front of him, and fishing through the two hundred dollars in cash I kept on my person. “Here, take a ten.”
“Really?”
“I don’t have anything smaller.”
“You serious? I get the whole ten?”
“Yes,” I insisted.
I held out the ten-dollar bill, and Gregory plucked it gently from my fingers.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Earl, but everyone calls me Trey.”
“Trey, I’m Gregory.” He put a hand on my shoulder, kissed me on the cheek, and whispered in my ear, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“You’re welcome.”
I leaned forward to kiss him back but stopped myself. He had already stepped to the side and turned away to put my money in his wallet.
“Which room are you staying in?” I asked. “I’m in 315.”
“Oh, I don’t live here,” he explained. “My dealer does. I’ll catch you later, Trey.”
Then he took off up the stairs. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see him again. But he’d been so charming and sexy that I wasn’t angry at him.
Gregory, bless his heart, did track me down in my apartment a couple of days later, and he rolled me a joint. He smoked half of it with me as we sat shoulder to shoulder on my stiff orange futon. I tried to act casual, despite my fervent hope that getting high together would lead to sex. Sylvester’s album All I Need was under the needle on my record player.1 I pressed my left knee and thigh against Gregory’s right leg.
“Got you a nice place here,” he said, eyeing my apartment. “Who’s the daddy payin’ for all this?”
I misunderstood the question and answered, “My father is Ward Singleton, but my parents aren’t supporting me.”
“Nah, I’m not talkin’ about them.” Gregory handed me the joint. “Your daddy. The man turnin’ you out and payin’ your bills. What’s his name? I probably know him.”
“I don’t have a daddy,” I said, realizing that once again a man was assuming that I had a calling in the sex trade. “I’m not doing that. Do I look like I do that?”
Gregory smirked. “Yeah. You’re gay, and you ain’t hidin’ it. Hell, you advertisin’ with them tight pants and the way you sway your ass when you walk. Plus, you got that clean, young look that chicken hawks go crazy over.”2
“Well, I’m not into that.”
“Okay.” Gregory pointed to the joint dangling between my fingers. “You just holin’ that to look pretty or what?”
I put the joint to my lips and enjoyed it. The weed that Gregory had scored was sublime: a mellow ride that not only banished worries but induced easy laughter. Gregory and I got increasingly comfortable under its influence. He put an arm around my shoulders. I draped a leg across his lap. He quizzed me about my plans in New York City, and I had to admit that I hadn’t thought much beyond just arriving and finding a place to live. I didn’t have a job lined up. I didn’t have a network of contacts to help me find my way. I didn’t have a master plan. As we finished that first joint, Gregory and I found my aimless existence hilarious.
I didn’t know Gregory well enough yet to tell him that actually I felt quite accomplished having escaped a life in Indiana among the damned: the fallen women, the broken men, and the godless sex perverts. Public sinners. Cautionary tales to the good people I grew up among. Lessons apparently lost on me because by the time I reached high school, I was considered destined to dwell on the outskirts of polite society.
There were no two ways about it. I was gay and notorious. Mind you, I didn’t come out as a homosexual while living in Indiana. Given my mannerisms, that step wasn’t necessary. I was fooling no one, and before I reached puberty, I stopped denying the playground taunts.
As for my notoriety, it stemmed from a family tragedy. My younger brother, Martin, died when he was nine years old. His death would have been harrowing enough to process had it remained a private matter. When it became a news story, my pain was amplified, and my grief was distorted. I was eleven years old. I didn’t know how to handle the whirlwind. Along with the other surviving members of my immediate family—my mother, my father, and my younger sister, Jackie—I was initially the recipient of unrelenting pity and curiosity from locals who followed the story of Martin’s loss. But I managed in short order to dash the sympathy that people held for me, and I seemingly confirmed, to all who suspected, that my homosexuality was indeed a sign of my depraved soul.
