Novel Excerpt by Brian Harrison - 4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The Feather Boy

Frank Zappa once said that by the time Woodstock happened all the real hippies were already dead. I wasn’t old enough to be part of that scene, so I cannot attest to the veracity of his statement. It is of course hyperbolic, but I know what he meant. The famed festival of free love and rock&roll was a commercial venture that, through commercial means, came to symbolize all that was not commercial, which is of course indicative of a most successful commercial venture.

In parallel; by the time John Travolta took to the dance floor in his glistening white polyester suit, locking poses that gay boys only executed in jest; gyrating movements that were watered-down by well tempered heterosexual restraint: grinding embarrassingly machismo hip thrusts to the Bee Gee’s tamed suburban thumps, disco was already reaching its zenith. It was all downhill from there. All that was left was the money to be made.

Of course this too is all excessively hyperbolic. The clubs were still packed, Donna Summers took Pink Floyds place as standard fare on the album racks as Giorgio Morodor took Alan Parsons' as the producer of note. DJ’s stole gigs from traveling bands and learning to mix replaced learning guitar licks, even after Eddie Van Halen had breathed new life into the trade. The clubs are still jumping to this day; they have indeed morphed into mobile venues. No longer delineated by such mundane concerns as sexual persuasion or geology, they have evolved, often racing outside the borders of the city to find refuge and anonymity under the stars.

But we had been there long before the fad. In order to survive the deluge of posers that drowned our clubs after John Travolta caught the public’s attention, it became necessary to establish our home as a no-clone Zone. Polyester suits were the object of immediate and repeated ridicule and anyone ignorant or audacious enough to execute a Travolta inspired move soon found themselves crowd hustled off the dance floor or standing in a vacuum of cautious scrutiny; “surely you jest” written on the faces about them.

Some may discern a hint of elitism at the heart of this exclusionary policy. This would be a premature and incorrect judgment. It was more a defensive policy. This was our place; the place where we were free from jeers and beatings, free to preen and pose, to be queens or kings, princes or thieves as we chose; our little bubble in the midst of an uncertain world where we could take to the floor, raise our hands above our heads and “oot-oot” our way to nirvana.

The floor was where the alchemy occurred.

The Feather Boy stood in the midst of that alchemy, unaffected by the social tensions taking place under the shifting lights, unconcerned with any of the conflicts that led to the telling of this tale. An acolyte of another calling, he was connected to the rest of us only by the vicinity of our differing meditations.

As I watched The Feather Boy’s slow rhythmic trance dance, Vince began to move his body against me, bringing me back to our shared space and the complications his feelings for me created. Vince was a roller skater, competitive actually, and possessed of all the physical attributes thereof. It was one of those attributes, a set actually, packed firmly into his jeans, that had caught my attention just after the convincing innocence of his mistaken bump against me on our first meeting. He’d pressed the well rounded attributes against my leg in a manner that I’d be sure to notice. And I did.

And there we were again, in the midst of the heat and yelling, moving and sweating together as the Sunset People slipped into the shadows of the mix and the Capulets and Montagues took their place in an epic disco retelling of the tragic tale; the story that showed, perhaps like my own, that it was not truly good and evil at odds, but love and everything else. The thumping symphonic swell of sound brought even more of the crowd to the floor and Vince and I were rocked in the rhythmic embrace of the bodies around us.

That was when I noticed Gil. And noticed him notice me.

I remember Vince was pressed against me, his curly mane flopping in tempo; strands of it sweat-plastered against his forehead. His shirt was becoming gradually undone and his dancing increasingly involved parts of my body, mostly my arms, draped over his torso as he attempted to lure them into the lip of his pants and, I assume, further. But I had no intention of committing to anybody… well, any particular body… so early in the evening. I disengaged from this premature entanglement, masking my lack of commitment in the rather clumsy execution of a pirouette. It was not clumsy from any inability of mine, but rather from the complete impracticality of completing such a move successfully in so crowded an environment. The complete lack of grace in this completely utilitarian move went completely unnoticed and then was completely forgotten by me as a familiar androgynous face surrounded by long cascading brunette swirls slipped by and then to the side of the room, as if he were trying to not be noticed. I had never seen Gil do that. Vince pressed up behind me and started his own investigations, but I slipped away from his heated adorations and they dissipated into the blur of activity around me as Gil pinned me with those eyes.

It wasn’t until years later, sitting in my van at the mouth of an alley that I would understand the portent of that moment and realize that, no matter how verbose my attempt, I’d never quite be able to explain the power of that unexpected glance, and how it would stay with me through all the years between that moment and the conclusion of its effect on my life.

Then he was gone, lost as the crowd folded itself into the space he had passed through. The moment left with him and I had to flex a quick glissade to escape from Vince’s insistent fondling.

“Hey! The night is young,” I whispered, moving against him, trapping his arms at his side. I was trying to impress on Vince the decorum of the floor. The rules of engagement were set well within the parameters of casual sexual pursuits. Should I allow this public display of affection I might be pronouncing myself off-limits, at least for the night, to any others whose attentions I might be better served by, or seeking service of. Vince took all this in stride, but I could feel his disappointment in the way he went limp against me. I could see it in the defeat implied by his feigned smile and the tempered enthusiasm of his renewed dancing.

I took all this in stride too. It wasn’t my fault he was in love with me.

You may discern by now a certain myopic tendency on my part and perhaps a reoccurring theme of self-consumed sexuality. You would not be entirely incorrect in this judgment. But the night was young, as was I. Give us both a little more time to develop.

It is perhaps at this point where the Feather Boy can rescue me before I lose any chance at that book-type sympathy protagonists are expected to generate and sustain. He is, after all, the namesake of this chapter. Admittedly he is not mentioned for his importance to the unfolding events; nor is his absence crucial, for he is and was present. Rather, I find him to be my muse as much as others found him simply amusing.

As stated, he was oddly at home in this hall of carnal pursuits. He was not beautiful, nor was he particularly unattractive. Nor did he, in spite of his rather alluring attire, invoke any sexual response in me whatsoever. It is, perhaps, for that reason his memory stands apart from so much of my recollections of that place.

The Feather Boy stood in the center of the floor. He dressed the same every night. Flared leggings; flesh tight and so white they seemed to radiate their own florescence. Whatever shirt or jacket in which he may have arrived had been discarded and above his waist he wore only a solitary white feather draped over a smooth, white wrist by some strange arrangement of leather straps. He would raise his feathered arm and point his finger at the sparkling Eye of God while he slowly gyrated to and fro and to and fro. Seemingly unconscious of the sound waves crashing around him, he moved in a slow, hypnotic kundalini sway, as if to some other music, perhaps emanating from whatever realm he had flown to, leaving his body here to gaze up at the disco lights. His hand pointed the way to his transcendent sanctuary; feather dangling from his wrist as if a symbol of his flight.

I saw something in that self-absorbed escape; that perhaps in the same way the commercially spawned festival of free love and music transcended its tainted birth to freeze that space in time as a moment of purity; the Feather Boy’s conscious disassociation from the world, his flight into self, was the most immediate way to move beyond that limited arena.

But perhaps I was reading way too much into his autistic pose. Maybe it was as simple as Kip put it:

“That guy is so fucking weird. What is his trip?”

Kip slipped onto the huge floor speaker beside me, saying these words just loud enough for the immediate vicinity but leaving the Feather Boy safely out of hearing range. In the light of his completely unobtrusive presence, he had become unofficially off limits for the verbal assaults that such strange behavior usually provoked.

“Yeah, weird,” I replied, not wanting to express my equally weird theories about him. The Romeo and Juliet tragedy had concluded and Stevie Star, our resident mix guru, was looping some innocuous thumping tracks; letting us catch our breath before he slipped on a favorite and induced another round of obligatory dancing. Vince was seated on the lower stoop of the resting area that ran the length of the mirrored wall. He leaned casually against my leg and I could tell that he thought this contact might nourish whatever little flame he felt he’d ignited.

“Hey, you goin to Cokies?” Kip inquired, closer to my ear. I wondered how many people were going to ask me that question.

“No,” I said flatly, curious what reaction a more definitive response would inspire.

“Good,” he responded quickly.

Well, that mystery was solved. The next one though was more perplexing and quite unexpected.

“I need you to do me a favor,” Kip whispered.

I pulled away and faced him. I was sure my eyebrow was cocked which caused him to utter something in a reassuring tone that was lost in the thumping. He leaned close again.

“I just want you to give someone a ride for me. You can use my car.” He pressed his keys into my hand before I had a chance to say no. I had the sudden image of Tony conspiring with Kip to entrap me in an encounter I had no intention of repeating… with Tony anyway. But Kip gestured to the balcony, to a silhouette framed in purple backlight.

“You heard about JB?” he asked. He knew I had, but I confirmed this with a distracted nod as I made out the features of the figure shrouded in shadow above.

“Well, some weird shit is going down and he just needs to get to Burbank and…” Kip paused and I could feel him shrugging as he pressed against me so his words would not be lost in the roar. “I don’t wanna leave, so…” He continued, mumbling some explanatory gibberish, indecipherable beneath the building tempo and volume of the drums as Stevie Star spiraled towards another mad rush to the floor. But I didn’t hear anything he said. I had finally recognized that shape. I knew well the perfect features of the face that I could not see within the silhouetted frame of that cascading hair.

Vince glanced up, obviously alerted by what held my attention, and I could feel his arm grasp my leg a little tighter. It was a pathetic and futile gesture, or at least that’s how I saw it at the time.

By now Kip was yelling as a tide of dancers rushed for the floor. “I’m getting a ride to Cokies later! So just keep the car and do what the fuck you want. I’ll pick it up tomorrow at your place! Alright?”

In retrospect I can see so many things wrong with that offer that I could spend the rest of the chapter detailing them. Suffice to say it was most unusual and uncharacteristic for Kip to let anyone drive his car, let alone request someone do it. I could have pondered this. I could also have pondered why Gil, a most unanimously desired boy-toy would have trouble getting a ride from anyone, to anywhere, for any fucking reason.

I didn’t think of that, however.

“Yeah. Yeah, sure” was what I finally replied and I might have even swung the keys around my finger as I did, gazing up at the unreadable face outlined above me. But I am pretty sure Kip didn’t wait for that reply.

I slipped from Vince’s grasp, making my way towards the spiraling staircase. It would not be till much later that I would find out how much pain I so carelessly inflicted in my flight.

As I walked from the floor, the Feather Boy stood his ground amid the torrent of maddened dancers that rushed from the periphery of his trance and staked their territories as the music swelled. He was safe in the grasp of that realm, however illusory, where all things seemed to make sense.

We at least had that much in common.