Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs - Dave Holmes Page 0,34

Louis the next day and stood face-to-face with my parents and took a deep breath and immediately waited a couple more weeks and then came out to them. It was awful, and it took some time for things to be okay, but they were, eventually. I trusted myself, and I got through it.

I went back to school, ready to spend my fifth year prostrate to the higher mind, get my paper, and, finally, be free.

As graduation loomed, I decided that I needed to escape the Holy Cross of my mind. Enough of small places where everyone knows one another, enough of homogeneity. I was going to move to the biggest, greatest city in the world: I was starting over in New York City. I had enthusiasm, a poor understanding of how the world worked, a 2.4 GPA, and no job skills. I couldn’t fail.

In the spring semester of my senior year, I started sending out cover letters and résumés to advertising agencies in New York. I decided that Madison Avenue was the place for me: There was creativity, proximity to media, and suspenders, plus, a lifetime of pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t would seem to make me a natural.

A few agencies got back to me to set up interviews, the first of which was Saatchi & Saatchi in SoHo. I drove down from campus and spent the night at the Best Western in the South Street Seaport. And as is customary when I travel, I forgot one major item. Sometimes it’s a basic thing like toothpaste or deodorant; this time it was socks. I had a brand-new, early graduation present Brooks Brothers suit, which without socks would simply be too jaunty. Unacceptable. My interview was at 9:00 a.m., and so, bright and early, I hunted the Seaport for a pair of socks. Nothing. All that was open was a Walgreens, and their offerings were limited, but I was a hosiery beggar and therefore could not choose. I grabbed, I paid, I donned, I ran.

And so it was that I received my first big-boy job offer while wearing a gray, glen plaid suit and opaque women’s black thigh-high drugstore stockings.

I accepted. I got back in my car for the drive back to campus and Z100 was playing Collective Soul’s “Shine.” My new life had begun. I was an ad guy now. And a L’Eggs gal. Heaven, let your light shine down.

I began looking for apartments right away. My perception of New York apartments and their size came mostly from Janet Jackson’s “Pleasure Principle” video and Big: I envisioned massive, untreated warehouse spaces with floor-to-ceiling windows and exposed pipes. The heavy-doored elevator would open right into my place. I’d wait a tasteful few months before getting a trampoline.

The first place I saw was an $800/month jail cell in Chelsea with no kitchen or bathroom, shown to me by an angry man of indeterminate ethnic origin in a tank top. “Is shared bethroom. Is New Jork, is always shared bethroom. You sign liss? I am very busy.” I gave that guy a firm maybe and kept looking, settling on a place on the Upper East Side, right above Elaine’s on Second Avenue. It had wood floors at a 15-degree angle, so that if you opened the refrigerator, you had to keep a hand on the top of the unit so that it wouldn’t topple and crush you.

I signed the lease, bought a pillow and a blanket from Bed Bath & Beyond, and stayed the night. New York City! As night fell, I decided to go see what was what, the only way I knew how: by hailing a taxi, getting into the backseat, and telling the cabdriver, “I’m new here. Take me somewhere gay and awesome.”

What was cool was that he didn’t stab and rob me. Instead, he broke it down. Fahad had been there for sixteen years and he told me: “It’s going to be hard to live here at first, but after a few weeks, you won’t be able to live anywhere else.” I believed him. He dropped me at a West Village bar called The Monster that was apparently popular with Middle Eastern gay men at the time, wished me luck, and sent me on my way. I made some new friends there, tourists whom I accompanied to the Duplex for cabaret, where I met people who took me to Squeezebox at Don Hill’s to dance to punk music with drag queens. There I met people who brought