At Danceteria and Other Stories Read online

  Advance Praise for

  AT DANCETERIA AND OTHER STORIES

  “This highly original meditation on the ‘80s is like nothing else you’ve read. Dead celebrities are brought back to life in the oddest places: Jackie O in a New York sex club, Princess Di in a London drag bar, Rock Hudson at the White House. Plus Sylvester, Halston and Liza, Keith Haring, Madonna, and, best of all, an anonymous narrator who notices that only good-looking guys in New York are getting the new gay cancer. Odd conjunctions, great wit, and the shadow of AIDS make these stories deceptively light and strangely disturbing.” —Andrew Holleran, author of Dancer from the Dance

  “In his debut collection, At Danceteria and Other Stories, Philip Dean Walker writes with a kind of savage nostalgia, one that knows the past was not prettier or glitzier or more fabulous—only more terrifying. Set in the early 1980s, when the word ‘queer’ was still an insult and when doctors and nurses invented their own names for the mysterious disease killing beautiful young men, At Danceteria and Other Stories brutally exposes how what we don’t know about ourselves can kill us. Walker’s writing is vivid, electric, and devastating.” —Stephanie Grant, author of The Passion of Alice

  “These stories—so funny and inventive, so merciless, smart, and affecting—are like no others I know, populated with American celebutantes, like Liza Minnelli, Jackie Kennedy, and Little Edie Beale, and punctuated by an abiding American loneliness that has the power to break one’s heart. Walker’s stories are fully, fully alive.” —Richard McCann, author of Mother of Sorrows

  “At a time when many young gay writers are forgetting their queer lineage, Philip Dean Walker comes along and schools us with his debut short story collection. Here is Halston, Liza, and Warhol at Studio 54; here is a drag queen who rivals Josephine Baker’s star appeal; and here is, in Walker’s words, the boy who lived next to the boys next door, dead during the early plague years, but resurrected through Walker’s alluring prose, prose that renders the past our present. These stories are clever and do not apologize for their cleverness, like Rock Hudson, who explains here, ‘Handsome men know they’re handsome. There was no reason to be coy or overly modest about it—that kind of thing just reeked of phoniness to him.’ Phony, these stories are not. From the Castro to Grey Gardens, I travelled gleefully alongside Walker in At Danceteria and Other Stories, and am only disappointed the journey had to end.” —D. Gilson, author of I Will Say This Exactly One Time: Essays

  “Reading Philip Dean Walker is like being swept into the defiantly glittering rooms of tragedy-darkened souls. Walker’s At Danceteria and Other Stories testifies to the tart-tongued power of language to resurrect and witness, in tales that are screamingly funny and hauntingly sad. His men and women radiate an alluring self-awareness and fallibility that touches our deepest places.” —Elise Levine, author of Driving Men Mad

  * * *

  AT DANCETERIA AND OTHER STORIES

  Philip Dean Walker

  SQUARES & REBELS

  Minneapolis, MN

  * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The following stories have previously appeared in Jonathan: A Queer Fiction Journal:

  “At Danceteria”

  “The Boy Who Lived Next to the Boy Next Door”

  “Charlie Movie Star”

  “Don’t Stop Me Now”

  DISCLAIMER

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Even though celebrities and historical figures may be used as characters in these stories, their actions or dialogue should not be construed as factual or historical truths.

  COPYRIGHT

  At Danceteria and Other Stories.

  © Copyright 2016 by Philip Dean Walker.

  Cover Design: Mona Z. Kraculdy

  Author Photograph: Alex Kotran

  Cover Photograph: Steven Siegel

  SMASHWORDS LICENSE STATEMENT

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission. Please address inquiries to the publisher:

  Squares & Rebels

  PO Box 3941

  Minneapolis, MN 55403-0941

  [email protected]

  squaresandrebels.com

  A Squares & Rebels First Edition

  * * *

  To the memory of

  Ruth Ellen Manchester (1925-2001)

  and

  Stewart Irving Buckley, Jr. (1953-1991)

  * * *

  “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”

  —E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910)

  * * *

  CONTENTS

  By Halston

  Don’t Stop Me Now

  Charlie Movie Star

  The Boy Who Lived Next to the Boy Next Door

  Sequins at Midnight

  Jackie and Jerry and The Anvil

  At Danceteria

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  * * *

  BY HALSTON

  Liza is late to 101 East 63rd Street. Fashionably late, Halston thinks. Liza is always fashionably late to 101, but Halston doesn’t care because he is often late too. After all, people should wait for him. They should always be waiting for him. Anticipation. It keeps people talking about you. He will routinely call for a meeting at 10 a.m. at Olympic Tower and then purposely show up an hour late. What are they going to do? Have the meeting without him? Hardly.

  He should design a new fragrance and call it Anticipation. His first fragrance, simply called Halston, was the most successful designer fragrance of the last decade. He did it with Max Factor, and it really was a phenomenal success. Because he is a phenomenal success. So many triumphs, it’s almost embarrassing to list them all. And tonight, he is convinced, will be no exception.

  He snorts another line of cocaine off a rectangular mirror while wearing his mirrored sunglasses.

  “So, where is the Queen of Broadway?” Steve yells from the top of 101’s floating staircase.

  Halston doesn’t answer because, all of a sudden, Steve has reminded him of someone he hates. He reminds him of a faggy JCPenney button specialist (or whatever the person’s title is—Halston can’t be bothered with learning it) with whom he is now forced to work at his private offices in Olympic Tower. JCPenney, which is selling a new stylish (yet affordable) line of his fashions called Halston III, has a person who deals exclusively with the buttons.

  His regular ready-to-wear line never uses buttons. They are seamless creations: no buttons, zippers, or unnecessary closures. Maybe one small hook-and-eye. They are sculpted to the body. They become part of the body. Skins of hammered silk, shirred matte jersey, and cashmere. Just the sound of a zipper makes him think of back-to-school sales, parking lots with weeds growing through cracks in the asphalt, and abused women covering up bruises with peach makeup in station wagons before entering department stores in Des Moines.

  He doesn’t want to ever have to answer
Steve’s question about Liza’s whereabouts. And, he likely won’t have to because Steve will forget he asked anyway. Halston waits for the inevitable moment in which Steve will proceed to shut the fuck up and bring him a Scotch.

  As he bends down to do another line, Liza appears before him like a magic trick. Like she is Glinda the Good Witch in that big pink bubble in The Wizard of Oz with Liza’s mother in the blue gingham dress. Liza. His Liza. He never even heard her open the door.

  “Halston, darling. My driver is sick so I had to take a cab,” Liza says, exasperated.

  She is running her hands through her hair. It’s pixie short again like she wore it when she got her first Oscar nomination for The Sterile Cuckoo. Or Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. He can’t remember right now which came first. “You look fabulous, Halston. Just fabulous. They’re going to love you tonight. It’s just going to happen that way, I know it,” she says, whipping off a black cashmere cape he designed for her to reveal the gold metallic jersey gown he also designed for her. He altered the design slightly in order to distinguish it from the gown that became part of the Halston Originals ready-to-wear line. He doesn’t just design clothes for Liza. He designs Liza for her life.

  “You look fabulous, too, babe. Faaaaabulous,” he says.

  “Oh, do you like this little number? It’s by … Halston.” She winks at him. The thick crème Bakelite bracelets she wears make a muted clank as she shakes with laughter. That Sally Bowles laugh he loves.

  “Oh, well, then I adore it. But you’re late. Here, kisses.” He arches his back to extend his face to catch her kiss on his cheek as she makes her way to the sofa across from him. “Here, do this. Now.” He motions toward the long line of coke he’s set out on the mirror that he pushes across the table. The table is low to the floor and made out of glass. Several white orchids in gray ceramic vases are on the table alongside an oblong silver Elsa Perretti ashtray in the center. It’s already halfway filled with cigarette butts. Halston smokes so many cigarettes on a typical evening that he has begun to see them as his actual fingers, each one lopped off his body after he has exhausted use of it. They’re like part of a very chic exoskeleton that must be sloughed off at the end of each night so he can be reborn again anew in the morning.

  Liza snorts up the line and then licks a finger to collect the leftover residue, wiping it onto her gums. Halston reaches over and does the same, but more delicately. With more flair. More panache. He does even the smallest things better than other people. Even the way he does drugs is artful. Liza licks another finger and imitates him, smiling.

  “Hello, Steve!” Liza yells in the direction of upstairs. Steve appears at the balcony standing next to the silkscreen paintings hanging on the wall that Andy did of Halston and Liza. There are two images of Halston in different colors and one of Liza beneath him. Halston liked his so much that he used the image in an ad in 1974.

  “Heya, Angel. I brought over two things to wear, and I was up here trying them both on,” Steve says.

  “Just put on the tux, Steve. Andy’s meeting us there so we have to go. The limo is waiting,” Halston says as he puts on a black jacket over a black ribbed turtleneck with Ultrasuede patches at the elbows. He throws on a white silk scarf that is hanging off the edge of a gray lacquered side table. Ultrasuede is ultracool. He brought the material out of nowhere and totally made it a thing. All of his sofas are made out of it. The men he invites over at night sit on Ultrasuede love seats, naked and full of admiration for him. Ultrasuede is ultracool.

  “Fashion!” Liza says, her open palms framing her face, like she’s peeking out of a closed curtain one last time at the end of a show.

  *

  They meet Andy in the main lobby of the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Ocean Life where a party and a runway show to celebrate Halston III is taking place with over a thousand attendees. A red banner hanging across the entrance of the museum announces in white letters, “Introducing Halston III.” Andy is wearing black sunglasses and a black jacket with a black shirt and a pink neon tie.

  “That tie is very strange, Andy. I don’t think I like it,” says Halston.

  “You didn’t design it so you have to criticize it. I understand. Welcome to your party, Halston.” Andy looks over his shoulder for a moment as if he is being followed or watched. “I don’t like this museum. I never have. The cave people in the other wing feel threatening to me when I walk by them. I imagine them killing me when my back is turned, eating me, and then grunting together about how bad I taste.”

  “You don’t like this museum because none of your paintings are in it,” Halston says.

  “Of course, well, there’s that too,” Andy says.

  “I need a drink,” Liza says. “Halston, are you nervous?”

  He should be nervous. But somehow he isn’t. He knows the line is good. And Liza knows he wouldn’t even be here if he didn’t think the line was good. But Halston III is not really something he’s ever done before—it’s affordable casual-wear. He has never sent a pair of jeans down a runway before, that’s for sure. He doesn’t know what they will think. He wonders what Women’s Wear Daily will say in their review the next day. They’ve always been kind to him, enormously so. But it’s 1983, not 1973; there are certain things he can’t get away with anymore.

  “There’s champagne over there. I’m getting us some,” says Steve.

  “None for me, thank you,” Andy says.

  “I’ll have his,” Halston says. His mirrored sunglasses are back on and he has a palm placed against the small of Liza’s back. Liza, Steve, and Andy are his supporters tonight. Since he began licensing his name to a series of products and fashion, he thought that his trust circle might grow. Soon, everyone would be looking out for his best interests. What’s good for Halston is good for the Halston brand. It should be obvious. But it’s not. And the circle has been shrinking.

  He looks all around the great hall. He sees that they are standing underneath a giant blue whale that is suspended from the ceiling above them by a series of intricately arranged wires.

  “If that whale came down on us right now, the artistic output of the entire city of New York City would be decimated,” Halston says.

  “If that thing fell on me, the portrait I just finished of Christina Onassis would increase in value by 5,000%,” Andy says.

  “Did you remember to sign it this time?” asks Liza. Halston laughs.

  “No, I haven’t yet as a matter of fact.” Andy reddens, like a dead arm newly pumped with blood. “Making a mental note now.”

  “Liza, let’s go to the bathroom,” Halston says.

  “Oh, yes. Let’s,” she answers quickly, putting out her cigarette in a nearby ashcan.

  “Where are they going?” Halston hears Steve ask Andy as he and Liza are moving away. He has returned with flutes and a whole bottle of Dom Perignon.

  “I think Halston is going to sew a rip in Liza’s dress,” Andy answers, exhaling a funnel of smoke.

  It’s a single bathroom with a lock. As soon as they’re both inside, Halston dumps an amber vial out onto the ledge of the black Duravit sink and arranges the coke into a pair of long, sharp lines. Stripes, he thinks, seeing the fine white lines against the black surface. He should’ve added stripes to the JCPenney collection. Vertical stripes. Or beaded stripes. Or. Just stripes.

  “Look, someone left a present for me,” Liza says picking up a flute of champagne resting on the sink next to the soap dispenser. “You can’t take me anywhere.” She does a series of twirls inside the bathroom, the golden edges of her gown fluttering up like the spun gold of Rumplestiltskin. The harsh, overhead lights illuminate the sweat on her forehead and on her upper lip. She is bubbling, a bit manic, laughing. Like a tall puppet. “Well, except here. Right here. You can take me right. Here,” she says poking his forehead with her index finger, her nail painted smaragd green.

  He remembers how Liza was when he first met her, how horrible she felt about her body. She
thought she had no elegance, or grace, or style. She hated that she was a little too hairy for a woman. She was an ugly duckling with a good voice and a famous mother, that’s how she saw herself. She didn’t even own luggage and she had very little money. Halston told her to go out and buy a set of Louis Vuitton luggage.

  “You’re going to faint at how expensive it is, but I want you to buy what you can afford and have it sent to me,” he told her.

  Three weeks later, she came to pick up the luggage and Halston had filled it with clothes he had made for her. It was an entire wardrobe. He made her everything she would need, clothes for every occasion. He even made a leather-bound look-book for her which showed how to accessorize each outfit and when and how to wear it. They were clothes that accentuated her best and hid her worst. Liza had wonderful shoulders and great legs, and he wanted to highlight them. She was gamine and wore bold colors well. Liza made his clothes come alive.