The End of the 00s: A Personal Chronology of the Last Decade Organized Around My Blackouts, by Rod...
The End of the 00s: A Personal Chronology of the Last Decade Organized Around My Blackouts, by Rod Townsend
by The End of the 00s
Waikiki 2000
Resurface: The living room of my friend Devin’s Waikiki apartment was full of light from a noonday sky. Looking around the room, fully dressed on the couch, I saw my boyfriend on the air-mattress below. I was awash in a feeling of peace right up until I vomited a purple-red gusher.
Remembered: On a rock formation off of Diamond Head that jutted into the Pacific we sat surrounded by water and warm ocean breezes while we waited both for the New Year’s fireworks and for our ecstasy to hit. The lightweight in the group, I was feeling it already as two children approached us asking immediately, “Is the world ending?” After the fireworks and the communing with nature, the subsequent trip to the local gay bars seemed tawdrily mediocre, so I drank heavily and popped even more ecstasy.
Remembered (sort of): Janet Jackson’s entourage was immense, so whether she was at the after-hours club or not was debatable. My mind too busy dancing around lights and looking at music and weaving lovepoems to gods of another realm to be pestered by her presence.
Recounted: While sitting on the floor of the club bathroom, peeling paint off the urinal wall, my boyfriend implored me to leave, to which I replied, “Relax. It’s not a sex thing.” Later, Devin confronted me saying I was not acting like myself, so I pointed to a raver and told him, “At least I’m not playing with a fucking glowstick,” which put him at ease.
Kristianstad 2001
[Redacted]
Las Vegas 2004
Resurface: At an afterhours club in a strip-mall, it suddenly occurred to me where I heard that sound before. My new Razr had the coolest ringtone, this sort of wistful cry of nostalgia and hope, and my boyfriend, who had stayed in, was calling. Noting the 8:30 a.m. time, I wondered how I would be able to get back to The Tropicana, check out, meet Dad for breakfast, and make my 11 a.m. flight.
Remembered: A gay German couple befriended me at Krave. In honor of our new friendship, JÃ¥ger shots were purchased. Locals recommended the afterhours and upon seeing that it was merely a closed restaurant in a stripmall, my flight instinct kicked in, but something edged me inside and straight to the bar.
Remembered (sort of): My wrap-around Romeo Gigli glasses were being admired by a local girl. They ended up missing that night, despite me keeping an eye on anyone with decent glasses-as they were, in my mind, potential suspects.
Recounted: Apparently it wasn’t the first call the boyfriend had made, as I would answer and say that I couldn’t hear him over the music. He would implore me to come back to the hotel. He would remind me of breakfast plans and the flight. He would remind me that I was in Vegas because of Dad’s diagnosis of cancer.
Bonus: Dad was eventually met that morning, and he let me know months later that he could tell I’d been out all night and that he could barely hold back his laughter. My next visit, after he’d moved back home to Evansville, was the last time we’d ever see each other, and he let me know that he’d never seen me so vulnerable as he had in Vegas-not since I was a kid. And he understood. I loved that man.
Puerto Vallarta 2005
Resurface: The bedroom of my hotel room was quiet except for a phone that just wouldn’t stop ringing: “Señor. La policÃÂa llamó sobre su amigo.”
Remembered: After a very long flight, my boyfriend and I hit the town, making friends with a group of Guadalajara boys (with perfectly sculpted noses) who were very generous with the tequila shots.
Remembered (sort of): At a dance club, the boyfriend was determined to find cocaine, asking around in a sort of embarrassing manner.
Recounted: The boyfriend was offered coke, but the transaction had to occur down the street in an alley. He was robbed of all his money and cards. And clothes. Traumatized and drunk and naked, he broke into someone’s condo and passed out. He was arrested for trespassing. Somehow it was my fault.
Bonus: This sort of counts as two as it is really just an intro to a longer multi-day drug binge and blackout from which I resurfaced while riding in the back of a bulletproof SUV on the outskirts of town with a drag queen, a club promoter and a stripper who also happened to be one of the city’s biggest dealers. The next day I noted that everybody in town greeted me by name and with a smile. And I was fluent in Spanish. And, well, some things you save for a book deal.
Bronx 2006
Resurface: My plea to the driver was urgent, “Where am I and what time is it?” We were heading down Second Avenue on a Friday morning. Eventually I saw a Crunch Gym and told the driver to let me out. All I knew is that I had to be stronger. I just had to be stronger. An hour later I stared into a mirror, doing seated shoulder presses and fixating on the bruises on my arms and wrists. The dumbbells fell hard on the floor as I choked back a sob.
Remembered: My friend Chuck was tending bar in Hell’s Kitchen. That my signature drink was not its signature opaque brown and was instead translucent was less a source of concern and more proof of our friendship. While I knew the Johnny was hitting me hard, it was my plan to just switch over to simple Diet Coke, but then came a smoking hot Dominican guy and his offer to share a coke that was not Diet in the bathroom. When he suggested we get more, it seemed like a good idea so we left the bar.
Remembered (sort of): No one realized that this blue-eyed guy with a red beard understood Spanish, but in this restaurant-turned-cocaine-speakeasy, the words were clear to me. “Who is this guy?” “He’s with me.” “Don’t worry.” “One more.” “He shouldn’t be here.”
Recounted: There was no one to tell me what really happened the rest of that night, just a vague memory of being in trouble and of needing help and of my arms being held and of a gun. A look online at my checking account the next day sort of explained the situation. Eight withdrawals, all within minutes of each other added up to a half-month’s pay.
Bonus: When I arrived home, my boyfriend (the same one that had been bailed out months before) didn’t believe my story at first until I emotionally collapsed. Even then, his reaction would measure into our breakup a month later.
Cherry Grove 2007
Resurface: In my nightmare I was screaming in pain. It was so intense that it woke me, and soon the screams went from inside my head to fill my room and soon my share-house. The housemate with whom I shared a bed (not because we were roommates, but because we were fucking) woke with a jolt and after seeing the blood-covered rags covering my left foot joined me in screaming. The pain was unrelenting, so we rushed to the Cherry Grove Doctor’s House, where my continued screams and my housemate’s knocking woke the doctor, who agreed to open the clinic early to address my wound.
Remembered: While out for drinks, the housemate and I had befriended some very fun lesbians. We brought them back to the house, where more drinks were poured and weed was smoked and the hot tub became a destination for a late night skinny dip by the group.
Remembered (sort of): At some point it was apparent that one of the lesbians was masturbating the housemate that I was fucking. (If there is a term for the “person that has a boyfriend that never comes to Fire Island, but with whom you’ve been having amazing sex for a month”, please substitute it here.) While the relationship with the housemate was completely open, jealousy apparently was expressed.
Recounted: After huffily exiting the tub and stomping through the garden, I wrapped a towel around my waist and went for a walk to calm my temper (and/or find some quick random sex). On returning to the house, something (very possibly a wrought iron chicken doorstop) was on the receiving end of a kick from me, resulting in a massive gash to my big toe. The lesbians had left, and the housemate I was fucking had help in trying to treat me from a houseguest. A Colombian, he insisted on the curative and pain-relieving power of coffee grounds, which he packed into the wound and wrapped it. The next morning the doctor, a calm, patient woman from Long Island, advised me that this was a terrible, horrible, just bad thing to do. While she offered a prescription of Percocet (despite my insistence on Oxycontin), filling the scrip would require a trip to shore, so her opinion of cocaine as a painkiller was requested. She found it contraindicative to the healing of the three stitches in my toe, but it was July Fourth. Hours later, with me in my wheelchair and the housemate I was fucking, who was dressed as dominatrix nurse, we were on the ferry that would soon depart for The Pines.
Fire Island Pines 2008
Resurface: Hurricane Hanna was stirring up wind and rain outside and the smell of bacon and coffee wafted into Tommy’s room. As I became more awake I sort of stared at the ceiling a bit, smiling about finally being with this guy with whom I’d had a long and mutually unrequited crush. Finally I turned to look at him and realized that this was not Tommy’s room and this was not Tommy. It was Ricardo.
Remembered: Tommy emailed me when I was approaching the end of my six-year relationship. As I wasn’t a cheater, I didn’t reply to his message with much more than a polite “Thank you for your kind words.” One summer later, we met during my distraction with the housemate I was fucking. He came up to me at High Tea and said in a southern drawl, “You’re Rod. You have a blog, and I think you’re sexy as hell.” I immediately recognized the hot former University of Alabama football player with twinkling blue eyes from the previous year’s email.
Remembered (sort of): Another year later we randomly met up again, strangely enough at High Tea. Unencumbered with any significant other, this time I went for it. We immediately hit it off over multiple planter’s punches and eventually went back in the rain to his place to hit the hot tub.
Recounted: After some good morning pleasantries and a blowjob, I was ready to go home, which was easy, since Ricardo was my island neighbor. Looking around, I asked for my clothes. “You weren’t wearing any when you got here.” While I found his reply funny, my clothes were needed to go home. “No, really. I was in here talking to Brian, and you walked in here naked, pointed at me and said, ‘We’re fucking.’” After borrowing some clothes (which looked ridiculous on me, as Ricardo was six-four), I showed up at my own home-just in time to see the rest of my housemates gathered for breakfast. Sitting next to one of my best friends, I whispered a nervous confession: “Vito. I don’t know where my clothes or my phone or my wallet are. I think I was at a house on Fisherman’s.” Vito would later walk with me from house to house, asking for Tommy. As it would turn out, Tommy didn’t hear us knocking, but had sent me another email with his exact address. His memory held no details either.
New York 2008
Remembered: Standing in Corey’s DJ booth at Aspen, my index finger swinging in front of me at the swirling gay mass: “I’m not dealing with all that right now, Corey.” Next to me stood Steve and Ruggero, who were very lovey-dovey which was confusing as Steve was boyfriend to Tex, not Ruggero. Anyway, Steve was confused too by my wallflowering and asked what was up. “Some twink just blew me in the bathroom, and after, he like, said my name. As in he knows me. So I’m hiding out with y’all for a while.” Suddenly there was another caffeine-infused tequila drink in my hand, awful and awfully strong, but they were the sponsor of this Ali Forney Center “Very Mary Christmas” fundraiser, so it was free and so it went down the hatch.
Remembered (sort of): My black canvas Muji bag had to have been stolen, or at least that was what I was sure of while I was searching through the trash cans of Eighth Avenue Chelsea. Someone had totally jacked my bag and with a glassy-eyed determination I reached into yet another can, right across from the Rawhide. Surely they rifled through it and took what they wanted and then tossed the bag so as to not have to lug around the evidence. It was the last can I rifled through after my hand plopped into warm vomit.
Recounted: When my phone finally found its charger (freaking iPhone) the texts from the night before were mostly mumbo jumbo, but the three a.m. “Need help. Bg stol” to Corey needed to be addressed with a quick call that became not-so-quick as he filled in a memory purge. Seeking to quell the booze, I’d dragged him to secure a twenty-piece McNugget which I devoured as we walked to Barracuda. “Who’s Ricardo?,” he asked. My drunken mouth had apparently chastised Corey for having let me fuck him bareback last summer, and I’d informed him of the anxiety and HIV test that followed. (Corey, standing at least eight inches shorter, looks nothing like Ricardo. And we’ve never fucked.)
Resurface: Footsteps coming down the stairwell in which I was sleeping woke me. Just outside my own apartment, I reached for my keys and put the right one in the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. My door had been reported as warped previously and had been a source of annoyance for weeks previous. Measure had to be taken as to which would be the greater sin: waking the super at 6 a.m. reeking of booze and still quite drunk or standing in the hallway and seeing my neighbors while in that state. As I rang the super’s bell, emotions built up. Desperation swelled as the wait for an answer continue. Guilt exasperated my condition to a point that when he opened the door bleary-eyed, I blubbered out, “John, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I… It’s just that my door won’t open and I’ve been waiting on the stairs for hours and I was robbed. They took my fucking bag. I’m tired and I’m drunk. I’m just exhausted, John. I can’t do this. I can’t do this anymore.”
New York 2009
[Redacted]
Rod Townsend wants to do a memoir organized around his blackouts, including those redacted here-and more! He also has a new website debuting in early 2010 which will change your life.