(Excerpt)
We took a cab down to the Eagle Bar to see what the hell was going on – surely something more exciting than the long line of clubs we’d devoured in the Neighborhood, surely something tawdry that could elevate us out of the slumber to which Nighttime affixed us. I had a list, a computer printout, an assertion in my brain that there was sex and liquor and muscle; a guiding leathery hand that would stroke the night into action, a heady burst of pulse and sweat. The ride was 8 bucks. We got dropped off at the corner in semi-darkness with barely any motion or sound, pools of light pulling our young eyes forward.
I saw the door and neon. A swish underneath my skin like a feather brushing raw muscle. I was skinned and exposed in the air. So many car rides with staccato lights darting in and out of my view, moving over bridges that connected highways to cities, slumbering with a fitful gaze as so many new sights pricked my brain. There was energy and waste, a feeling of falling off the edge of the planet – into a void of hollow time where all things began and ended silently. A beginning of the rest of many, many days and nights.
I hungered constantly, typing away in search engines and seeking new encounters. New muscle. I wanted darkness and sweat and the lingering smell of piss and vomit and violent music, to make my head swim with heat. I felt the lights behind my eyes on that dark road of youth with endless propulsion, unfathomable hollows. And I wandered into the bar, my complicit friends in tow, in dreamlike repetition.
