Club Land

Copyright 2007 Clayton Kinnelon Greiman

These are just a few memories from the decade plus I spent as a club kid.  In them, the gay 'community' is not cast in a favorable light.  I feel as though my kind has a moral imperative to take stock of their collective existence and to alter their behavior.  There's nothing wrong with being gay, but all too often being gay seems to exclude the traits of compassion, responsibility, and morality.  If we ever want to be taken seriously as human beings, it's time we started acting the part. 

Queen of Bitter Tears

(The story of my first crush on another gay male)

Two months after walking

Through a night club’s doors,

I became quite fond

Of a boy I found

Full of laughter and life.

In my eagerness to meet him,

I bowed before a queen,

Told her of my infatuation,

And asked how I might win

That boy’s heart.

She looked at me and said,

“Why, he’s dying of AIDS;

You can’t possibly love him!”

I started crying and couldn’t stop,

So the queen took my face

Roughly in her hands and said,

“What the fuck are you crying for?
Don’t you know he went and did it to himself?”

People who are dying don’t want you fucking pity;

They don’t want your goddamn tears.”

Then, she went and told him

That I was crying because he was dying,

And he came to me and asked

”Who the fuck are you to cry for me?

Hell, I don’t even know you!”

I told him I thought he was beautiful,

And that I didn’t want to see

Such beauty taken from the world.

He laughed in my face,

Saying he had never met anyone so stupid.

Such are the nights that strip

Away the layers of the soul,

Leaving only Darkness

To fill the void

Where faith once lived. 

My Brethren 

      Tonight, surrounded by gay men, I felt indifference and loathing towards them.  The smoking, the drinking, the self-destructive promiscuity.  It was all anathema to me.     

      The only person with whom I wanted to converse was a heterosexual young man who had just started working at the club.  I wanted to take him aside and tell him not to give in those who frequented the establishment.  To never let them see his dick, to never talk about it, to never let them touch him.

     Yet, within hours, that is just what they were doing, pawing all over him, not simply because he was a handsome man, but more so because he was heterosexual, and thus something to be conquered.  

      I thought back to a young heterosexual male named Christian, and of how the people of that club took advantage of him when he was drunk, leading him around the club, his eyes glazed in a stupor, his dick hanging out of his unzipped jeans.  The things that led him, as though part of some deranged circus act, were calling out, "Pay to touch his one-eyed monster!  Pay to play!  He was straight today, but tonight he's drunk and gay!"

     Sometime later, he slipped out of his drunken haze while using a urinal, at which another man was holding his dick.  In a fury at the realization at what had been done to him, he punched his fist through a wall.  Security was called, and he was banned from the club for life.  The official reason for his being banned?  Destruction of property brought on by homophobia.           

     They had had Christian, and that was the end of his use.  His dick had been touched; the rest of him didn’t matter.  What heart?  What soul?  These things are irrelevant to those who traffic in a gay nightclub.

       Such is the reason I will never again be seen in one.  

Russian Roulette

      There was a four-year period during which I worked at a gay nightclub.  On the nights we were scheduled off, some of the staff would challenge one other to have sexual intercourse with as many men as possible before the bar closed.  The game we played was a sexual version of ‘Russian roulette’; only the bullets were orgasms, and we never knew when we’d get the infected one that might someday kill us. 

     Yet, we played as though victory were everything. 

      I had never had anyone proud of me in my life, and on those nights when I won, everyone gathered around me;  they caroused, laughed, and said such complimentary things as to make me feel intoxicated.  

     When I think back to those days, I see myself smiling, and I can feel my face becoming flushed as the other employees tussle my hair and relate how proud they are of me.  Only now, there is a great shame intermingled in those memories, in my having taken pride in existing only as a mouth or an anus, and nothing of a soul or a brain.

      If I could go back, I would tell him that young man he was better than he knew and that he didn’t need to whore himself to make others like him.

      I learned that lesson late in life, but I was fortunate and never got shot during the game; others will learn the lesson early on, only after haven taken a bullet, and they will lie with their wisdom in the grave shortly thereafter. 

Barbed Wire 

     I once knew a very handsome young man who frequented a gay nightclub.  When asked, he stated that he was heterosexual; yet, when I wore nearly nothing to special club events, he would approach of his own accord, embrace me,  and remark how attractive I looked.  Even when our paths crossed outside the club, he maintained this open level of physicality. 

     A few months after I had met him, I was told he had joined the marines and was soon to be deployed to Afghanistan.  That night, wanting to wish him well, I sought him out at the club, approached him from the side, and started to speak to him.  He immediately stepped back, this intense look of hatred on his face, and asked, “Why the hell are you getting so close to me, man?”

     Not losing my temper, more hurt than angry, I calmly said, “I heard you were being deployed to Afghanistan; I wanted to wish you well, and to express my hope that you returned home safely.”

     From a distance I had seen someone who had been kind to me, but having stepped across the threshold of their home without invitation, I walked blindly into the barbed wire that had been strung to greet me.

     I left bleeding, swearing an oath never again to let him near me.