Faith Junkie, Part Two
From the upcoming collection of short stories titled “The Secret Society.”
This is Part Two of a draft for a three-part story inspired by a relationship I had with an adjunct professor in my early twenties.
Before I get to that moment where she would see the truth about Salvatore for herself, so much had happened in the in-between.
Despite knowing who Jim Jones was,1 Mariam failed to see the same qualities in Salvatore because of her blind spots. Before he came into her life, it was our routine that on the one day in the workweek I didn’t have class, I’d drive down to SoHo, meet up with her, and together we’d walk to a park along the Hudson River to people-watch while she did a lot of stream-of-consciousness talking.
I enjoyed so much how she’d talk so excitedly about things that were important to her, as though she’d never had that before—the unconditional ear of someone who was in love with her.
However, now that Salvatore was in the picture, whenever I would take her to the park, she would sit next to me in silence. And when I would try to prod her to talk about her day, she would give me one-word answers. It was as if, by that time of day, she’d already “blown her load” with someone else. Sure enough, the last time I walked her back to her job, Salvatore was there in her office, waiting to talk more “business.”
The same look she used to give me, she now gave to him. As they began talking, Mariam didn’t even realize I had said goodbye and was leaving. She was still talking to Salvatore about the Sacred Feminine.
We’re all human, and it’s natural to feel jealousy. And there I was, driving back to the Bronx, feeling angry and jealous over what my foolproof Gaydar told me was a gay man having the undivided attention of the older woman I foolishly loved. That night, I drove over to her place as I normally would, using the key she’d given me to her apartment, so we could spend some time together—and found Salvatore there. He was in the kitchen, pouring wine into two glasses from the bottle I later learned he had brought over to continue their conversation from earlier that day, while Mariam talked to him from her couch in the living room.
There was a heavy silence as the two stopped talking, Mariam looking at me as though I were suddenly a stranger with no permission to even use the key she’d given me.
Salvatore walked in from the kitchen, handing Mariam a glass, saying, “This is the Blood of Christ.”
Mariam said, “Amen,” before taking a big gulp, shattering the sobriety she fought hard to keep in place.
I was going to call her out, but Salvatore took that opportunity to call me out. He said, “Mariam told me how you mocked her for her enthusiasm for my ideas.”
“Mock?”
“Made fun of her, mistaking her enthusiasm for a ‘crush.’”
I looked at Mariam, who was doing her best to avoid eye contact with me, and said, “This is what did it? Knocking you off the wagon? Not your colleagues calling you names to your face for dating someone as young as me? Not the hit you took to your reputation for wanting to stay with me? No... it was this clown with his magic words.”
"This clown respects her enthusiasm. And this is just my opinion—nothing she may have shared with me in confidence—but maybe you should’ve never involved yourself with her, knowing the potential backlash to her reputation and career."
I lost my “frame”2 there because I began trying to justify myself to him, saying how it was her who first seduced me, using her money to take me out to these fancy places, having me eat really good food when, at that time in my life, I’d been surviving on spam and rice with ketchup. Then throwing it back at me that I shouldn’t worry about the age gap, that a proper gentleman would know to return the favor.
“Get out!” Mariam yelled.
I looked at Salvatore, who then said with a smirk, “If you’re the proper gentleman she says you are, then you’d know this is the moment you’d surrender your key and leave.”
He didn’t need to tell me twice. I placed her key on the coffee table, next to her empty glass, and left. I thought what had gone down between all of us got me off the hook from Salvatore’s vision, which was set to come to fruition the weekend after our breakup, but no. Mariam called me the next day, and at first, I thought she was calling to try to fix things between us, but no. It was to remind me of the contract I had signed shortly after first meeting Salvatore.
“If you’re a real man, you’d honor your obligations.”
I didn’t want to—what were Salvatore and Mariam’s bosses going to do, sue a broke college student?—but I did it anyway because I felt a sudden shame for even entertaining the idea of not working for free. That, and also, my father reminding me that at the end of the day, if I enjoyed doing what I did (which, at the time, was DJing), I should follow through because it was in my interest to do what made me happy first.
I took that to heart.
When I signed the contract, Mariam had given me a packet containing all the information I’d need to do my thing at what had been promoted throughout the city as The Communion. Where I needed to go that night. My place in the lineup of DJs.
I was the second of three, playing out my role to take the crowd—who would no doubt be high on acid and ecstasy by then—build up their already euphoric mood, priming them before turning it over to the main draw, the superstar with top billing. His job was to drive the dance floor with even harder, pulsating sounds, pushing them into a frenzy before bringing them in for a landing, which usually came around five in the morning.
Because of my placement in the lineup, pride compelled me to do my absolute best.
Then came the night. The packet stated I was to dress in something resembling a Catholic school uniform, which was stupid to ask of me. The way things were in New York back then, whenever I played out, I always dressed in a black shirt and jeans, which amplified my physical size. It was a signal to others—usually drunk or high and prone to starting fights—not to try me. That I would fuck them up.
Before our breakup, whenever I dressed like that while out and about with Mariam, she’d say, “You look like a thug—the best kind of arm candy a gal like me could have for walking around the city.”
I brought some arm candy of my own: another ex-girlfriend, Veronica. She had broken up with me for being consistently broke, but once she saw I had someone like Mariam in my life, she suddenly became interested in fixing things between us.
There would be no fixing.
She had moved on after I refused to break up with Mariam, and she had since found a new boyfriend. But we did have intense sexual chemistry, which she told me she missed. And as long as I could be discreet about it, now that Mariam was out of the picture, we could start having sex again—no strings attached.
Which was all I wanted.
Especially after trying to cope with my broken heart, I no longer wanted to feel.
Anyway, back to that night. Since I told Veronica about the theme for The Communion, when I went to pick her up at her apartment building in the Castle Hill section of the Bronx, she rushed out wearing the Catholic school uniform she used to wear in high school. She jumped into the front seat of my car and yelled at me to floor it.
“I’ve got eyes on me—just go!”
And I did.
After driving like “Mad Max” on the Cross Bronx Expressway and the Henry Hudson Parkway, we made it on time to the warehouse on Manhattan’s west side, where The Communion was going down.
In the days leading up to the event, the promoters bombarded every spot devoted to fashion, music, and art—every space tied to club culture.
It showed. A long line of people stretched down towards 12th Avenue, waiting to get in.
The bouncers unlocked the velvet rope for us and let us pass. I towed my box of vinyl, which I planned on “spinning” during my set, as Veronica followed me down several long hallways and through various doors. We ended up in a boiler room doubling as a makeshift green room for the “talent” and their hangers-on, attaching themselves like suckerfish to sharks.
Salvatore, the king shark, whose only talent appeared to be making bullshit sound beautiful, walked into the room with his own suckerfish—young men dressed like boys, hovering close and looking high. Salvatore approached Mariam, giving her a quick pat for a hug, before looking past her to a Calvin Klein model, whose muscular physique in tighty-whities—plastered on billboards all over the city—had drawn widespread attention, and went over to him.
Mariam stared at Salvatore, who was fawning over the model like a teenage boy meeting their centerfold crush, and said, “I see how it is, okay…”
It looked like she was about to march over to Salvatore to set things straight, but one of her co-workers stopped her to say the first DJ was about to wrap up his set. Mariam looked around, spotted me, and walked over to tell me—glancing up and down at Veronica before saying, “You brought a little girl with you.”
“Why not? Don’t forget, I was your little boy.”
It looked as though that comment punched Mariam in the gut, the way she winced.
“I don’t have time for this. You’re up. Let’s go.”
Mariam led me out of the boiler room, down another long hallway, and through a metal door that opened at the corner of the crowded dance floor. The first DJ, who had been playing from a slightly elevated booth, saw me and began wrapping up his set. As I performed the ritual all DJs must perform—the changing of the guard—Mariam was looking my date up and down while Veronica stared at her with Charles Manson eyes and a wicked smile.
Once I had assumed my place behind the decks, Mariam broke eye contact with Veronica and turned back to me.
“As much as I’d like to socialize, I’m here to work, but we need to talk later.”
Mariam marched off in a huff, pushing her way through the Train Spotters—club kids who obsessively hovered by DJ booths in hopes of getting the names of songs being played, most of which were not easily available.
The memory of what happened next hurts me to this day. It's the reason I can’t stand people who, when you first meet them, tell you how awesome they think you are—trying to enter your spirit so they can rip you apart from the inside out.
Part Three of this story is coming soon. In the meantime, my novel, The Beautiful World of the Alive, which explores many of the themes in short stories like this one, is now available in eBook and paperback on Amazon.
Frame is what I would call my solid viewpoint of the world, where everything that moves in me—causing me to react or not react—begins and ends with me, and no one else. Anything outside my Frame is either funny or not worth dwelling on.