Dream Catching

Forsythia Fitness Center was once a fully staffed gym with all the latest workout equipment.


All the hottest guys in the city worked out there including celebrities like David Geffen and his entourage of young, hung hot studs wanting recording contracts.


Today, the gym is closed. They converted the place into retail space and a store called Cribs popped up there. It specializes in designer infant clothing.


There once was a time when those seeking membership at the Chelsea gym were put on waiting lists for months. Dues were $250 for 30 days and it was worth every penny.


The workout center was open twenty-four hours. When gay men didn’t find a one night stand in nearby bars, they could always wander into Forsythia’s for a few sit- ups and some steamy shower action.


Donald worked behind the counter at the popular gym. He was as cute as a button, professional and courteous.


“He’s not gay,” loyal members claimed. They all wanted him but he didn’t mix business with pleasure. He was of rare ethnic origin; an American Indian with thick black hair and a square jaw line.




It felt safe working out there with a straight dude to watching over things at the front desk.



He always had a smile on his face. His teeth were perfectly shaped like kernels of Indian corn and were as white as the feathers on the head of a bald eagle.


On the late shift, Donald not only handed out towels at the front desk and checked queers in for their workouts, but he was also responsible for controlling all the action in the showers.


Gay men didn’t rub him the wrong way. He found no fault in men who chose to have sex with one another. In his lost culture, homosexuals were commonplace.


“I wish that heterosexuals were free as you guys,” he said when he caught a few dudes blowing one another in the shower room without stalls.




I chuckled at that comment while in the last row of wall lockers in the back. I didn’t like being naked around all those men with chiseled bodies, it reminded me that I was truly a lard ass.

“Come join us, Donald,” they said invitingly with water dripping from their lips.


“No thanks! Not my thing, but have your fill,” he said with that gleaming smile across his full red lips.


He walked towards the back of the gym to check out things and got a bird’s eye view of my fat ass bending over to dry off my feet.


What a sight that must have been for a man not into buffalo butts. He smiled at me as if I too were a size 30 waist and went on about his business.


I was too shy to look him in his dark brown eyes. I absolutely melted when he flirted with me with simple kindness. He always had words of work- out encouragement as he checked me in and out.


“Well Charlie, those pounds are really melting off of you. Before you know it, you’ll be the hottest gay guy in town,” he said after I handed him my membership card.


I was well over 200 pounds and I appreciated the compliment although I knew I’d never be as fine as the fit men who strutted around the place in tight spandex.


I knew Donald was undeniably straight so I didn’t tempt my imagination with the thought of being with him.


I could never stop getting enough of his compliments though. I went to the gym sometimes twice a day just to allow him to fill my head with delusions of grandeur.


Sure I spent all that cash just to get an up close look at the man of my dreams and share his peace pipe. The problem was, once I got checked in, I simply couldn’t turn around and leave. I had to spend at least a half-hour there, pretending to work out while stealing glances at the straight guy with a huge bulge under his silky sweatpants.




I often wondered if his pubic hair was thick, straight and black like that on his head.




I jumped on the stair master and set it at the slowest speed possible and walked for hours watching the queens strut around the place in their designer workout gear. I ignored them and waited patiently to catch a glimpse of the man I was secretly in love with.


I worked out and cruised Forsythia’s for an entire winter without missing a day. Even my baggy workout clothing had faded terribly from the tons of sweat which had seeped from my pores while on the stair master.


When Spring rolled around and the cold weather broke I headed off to Forsythia’s again in a new workout outfit. I decided to shed the long sleeves at the gym and put on a simple white tank top.


I had spent so much time punishing myself with excruciating work-outs wishing I had never allowed myself to become fat and ugly at such a young age that I didn’t notice my changing physical appearance over the long winter months.




Like so many gay men, I was in love with a straight man that I would likely never have inside my teepee and developed a horrible self-image. I failed to build my self-esteem along with highly defined biceps and pecks which grew like maze upon my body.


When I stepped into Forsythia’s that day, even David Geffen dropped his dumbbell to take a second glance at me.


“I have a nice place in the Fire Island Pines,” the leader of the Velvet Mafia said to me while marching on the stair master next to mine.


I accepted his business card while the queens at the gym gnashed their teeth at me.

“What did he say to you?” Donald asked while I was leaving the gym that day.


“Oh, he invited me to Fire Island. Who is that old ugly bastard?” I asked.


“Did he say you could bring a friend along?” Donald asked.


“As a matter of fact he did. Who is he?” I asked again.


“I’d love to be your date this weekend, Charles,” Donald said flirtatiously with that irresistible smile.


“I don’t think I’m going to go to Fire Island,” I said. “I’m starting to see some results from working out. I don’t want fall back into my old laziness trap and get fat again,” I explained.


“Please Charles, do this for me,” Donald pleaded.





I couldn’t just sneak away to Fire Island for the weekend. I had a part-time job working for Geoffrey Holder and his wife the famous dancer, Carmen de Lavallade.


I wanted Donald desperately and the opportunity to hang out with David Geffen and the Velvet Maffia was almost irresistible, but I already knew famous people.


The last person I wanted to rub the wrong way was the 7-Up un-cola man and lose my off-the-books part-time gig.


He practices voodoo.


Geoffrey was in the middle of writing a play and required my assistance not only with writing and typing but also needed me to help him move his large paintings around inside the couple’s Soho loft.


I wasn’t sure how to tell Donald I was turning him down and ruining his chance of getting signed on a major record label and hanging out in the vacation home of David Geffen.


It was a great part-time job and I didn’t want to ruin the relationship I had developed with two of the most gifted Blacks in America by running off to Long Island for a quickie with a record producer and the hot straight guy from Forsythia Fitness Center.




The living legends were introduced to me by an ex-lover, Frank West. Frank knew absolutely everyone in New York City that set foot on a stage along the Great White Way. My lover was a former lover of Alvin Ailey, which in a way, makes me a distant lover of one of the most talent male dancers ever to spin on point.


“Alvin only liked dirty, rough dudes– straight acting Black thugs,” Frank shared secretly with me one night while dancing in the sheets.


“Hell, who can blame him?” I asked while savoring ever last lick of that third leg of his. “You are as rough as they come,” I insisted.




Holder, de Lavallade and Ailey were not the only stars frank had me two-stepping with. Keith David was his best friend during the years we dated. I’ve low crawled with the man who portrayed a crippled veteran in the Hollywood blockbuster “Platoon” and have been told by the voice of Spawn that my apple pie is better than anything he has ever tasted.




“I’m flying out of town to shoot a movie called ‘Armageddon’ with Bruce Willis he explained to us over dinner at our place one evening. I wanted to ask so desperately that he call William Morris Agency to see if they could find me a part as an extra in the film, but I kept my mouth shut, as Frank taught me to do, and served my two handsome men apple pie.


Keith is a cool; probably the most talented straight man I have ever met. He told Frank to get his shit together when I threatened to leave them both. Keith was as addicted to my apple pie as Frank was to my hair pie.


“How did you know Alvin Ailey when you studied at Dance Theatre of Harlem?” I asked my ex-lover one morning after he banged my brains out.


“There are only so many dancers in New York and there are fewer gifted ones. I am a gifted one and Alvin saw that in me,” Frank explained as if he too were rich and famous.



I ate with Carmen and Geoffrey every Saturday night. It was a tradition. Geoffrey has published several Caribbean cook books and appreciated my no nonsense reviews of the fish dishes he whipped up. I’m not a huge fish fan and can hardly swallow anything that tastes like the sea.


Geoffrey loved getting me ripped over bottles of white wine. Carmen got ideas for her artwork and choreography as I spoke with my hands and told stories of how one day I would become a famous writer. Perhaps they loved me as much as they do their son, Leo. I’m not sure, but they are like parents to me.


“What’s your take on reincarnation?” Geoffrey asked.


“I’m here, am I not?” I said to answer their question with a question.


Carmen laughed hysterically.


For a moment I thought perhaps I may be the reincarnated Josephine Baker as I sat with two theatre legends playing the part of the parents I had always dreamed of.


One would never believe the Broadway legends have plastic lawn furniture at their dining room table.


The huge windows overlooking Prince Street offers a feel of eating outdoors.


I broke bread with Josephine Baker’s opening act in a Soho and was bored with the celebrity scene as I tried to swallow a little more fish and clean up my plate before insulting Geoffrey’s cooking.




I wanted only to be with Donald from the gym that Saturday night.




My own rise to stardom would have to wait.



“I’m sorry Geoffrey, I have to be honest with you, the seared sea bass is making me ill,” I explained while running to the bathroom in the west wing of the Soho loft.


I flushed the toilet several times to make it look authentic and splashed some water on my face before returning to the dinner table. I hoped my acting would fool the two Broadway legends and I seemed to be pulling off the request for sick leave.


“Oh dear, are you going to be alright?” Carmen asked.


“I think so. I really should go home and lay down. No offense, Geoffrey, the cooking is excellent as always, but I’ve been fighting off a bug all week.”


“Darling, stay here. Sleep on the sofa.”


“Geoffrey, let him go. He’s sick.”


He handed me a wad of twenties and I thanked them both. Carmen asked me to wait a moment while she went behind the partitions which separated her private bedroom from the rest of the huge loft space of their home.


“Here I want you to have this.” Carmen handed me heavy cardboard box from the Museum of Modern Art. “It’s a vase, put it in your new apartment when you find one,” she said.


“This is very beautiful, Carmen. Honestly, if you saw the rat trap where I am staying you’d think twice about giving me such precious gift,” I said with a slight moan while holding my tummy.




Perhaps she gave me the vase in case I got ill on the subway ride home. The box was dusty. The gift of the vase made no sense at that moment, but I took it anyway. I didn’t want to insult Carmen’s cooking either.


“Frank told me the two of you are breaking up,” Geoffrey said.


“Oh, yes. It’s time. Things were not working out between us.”


“Well, that’s none of our business. We like you and want you to keep coming around,” Carmen offered.


“Have you ever considered painting? I watch you at the keyboard when you capture my words. You look like a concert pianist when you type. Did anyone ever tell you that?” asked the man who played the role of Punjab in Annie.


“No. But trust me, I am no painter,” I responded and once again had that inclination that I was reincarnated and destined to have met the famous pair.


“Many of the world’s most accomplished painters did not pick up a brush until late in life,” said the actor from the James Bond flick, “Live and Let Die” while winking at me and granting me the night off.




I hurried down the freight elevator and ran onto Broadway in search of a phone booth.




I called information and obtained the number for Forsythia Fitness Center.




A woman’s voice answered the phone.




“Forsythia’s, how may I help you?”



“Is Donald there?” I asked.



“I’m sorry. He had to leave work early. He wasn’t feeling well,” I was informed.


It pissed me off that he was not at work.

Maybe he knew he had such a hold on me that I would actually call him on his cell phone and beg that we go to Fire Island together. Handsome men always carry that chip on their shoulder.

I looked too good to beg for sex in exchange for the connection to David Geffen. What was I doing? Donald was only a tease and I just blew off Geoffrey Holder.

The Summer of 2000 was pure bliss. Finally I met a man who made my heart jump again. I felt lust again, despite the hundreds of men I have bedded during my homoseuxal career.

It was most likel, the best time of my life. Some may say that I was riding the waves of the sea of mania that year. In a sense, we all were raging lunatics back then. There was no war, cash was readily available, and life was still fun and full of adventure.

There was nothing to do but spend lots of cash and lust over receptionists at the gym.I had a full- time job which required very little from me. I filed my nails all day and looked pretty while serving as the personal secretary for a high-riding bitch for a whopping $70,000 a year.

My boss surrounded herself with handsome gay men. I am as pretty as they come. Not only did I work part-time for two of the most talented Black artists in America, but was in the best physical shape of my life and had a cushy nine to five that allowed me to make lots of personal phone calls.

It was not easy losing over 50 pounds, but I did it in less than two months. Perhaps I had an eating disorder which was the real fountain of youth that when combined with a fierce work-out schedule offered me buns of steel.

I looked fabulous and straight men like Donald were giving me their private cell phone numbers.

It felt damn good to be self-centered for a change. I was a bitter divorcee; angry at the world because my husband, a dancer with a fierce body, fell in love with a skinny queer and dumped me. I lost the weight because the words of our lover’s quarrels hurt. "Your ass is washed up. You don’t even make my dick hard anymore, you fat bitch," were his last words to me before I cracked and beat his ass like a man before walking away from it all like a woman.

I was out for blood and although I was nearing 30, I refused to throw in the towel just because my ass got a little chunky.

There were days that I worked out for two hours and ate nothing but a ninety-nine cent bag of peanuts and lots of hung cock.

It was difficult competing for butch alpha males with herds of bottoms roaming the streets of New York City, pumped full of steroids and AIDS cocktail drugs.

I worked out religiously and refused to eat anything carbohydrate related. I lost all that weight and somehow didn’t get any stretch marks and didn’t have the bad breath associated with steroid use.

It was a gift from God, a new lease on life– ‘one last time around the rodeo’ I said to myself as I put on my square toe boots, baggy 501 jeans and a wife- beater t-shirt and refused to believe that I would ever again settle down with just one man.

I gave those skinny bitches a run for the money. It felt good to turn heads again and have handsome men and pretty girls insist that I take the last empty seat on crowded subway cars.

I spent the first thirty years of my life pursing a monogamous relationship with another man in a town where the life expectancy for those types of love affairs was three months.


Men are dogs and gay men are even worse when it comes to love. No matter how much you throw at them, there's always another piece of ass to chase.

I walked away from my third husband and decided it simply was not worth it to try to be married when there were not tax benefits or children involved. The anonamous sex scene was much more convenient and the men did not say cruel things when the love making started to become boring.

I decided to become a full-fledged slut despite all the risks involved with multiple sex partners.

Gay men in the city were spreading money around to cute skinny men like myself like STDs.

Times were changing. Queers no longer feared AIDS. We grew up with it and pretty much knew as New Yorkers, the odds were stacked against us anyway.

Rich old men wanted to give me tons of cash just to rub their backs. I was so sexy we didn’t have to have sex.

It was almost fashionable to be ill, thin and still pretty in 2000. My Johns knew I didn’t have the bug. There are many little traits that men can detect in one another that gives away the deadly murder weapons hidden secretly in the veins of promiscuous homosexuals with HIV.


It’s a sixth sense, a form of ‘gaydar’ that lets us know when a twelve incher has a secret weapon hidden in the semen. We can see it in their eyes. That desire to spread the horrible fate around and kill others as they had been slain by the demons of lust.

Thankfully I waited until my late twenties before getting caught up in the wealthy Hollywood sex and money scene and had parents like Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade who kept me grounded.

"You are only as good as your last press release," they reminded me over and over again, sharing secrets to surviving fame.

My fame was different than theirs. We were stars from different parts of the galaxy. I was the real star in town and their time had already come and gone.

Although I didn’t get any record deals out of my John’s I snatched parts of their souls as they paid me cash and thought they were exploiting me.

New York City is an orgy waiting to happen for those of us with good looks. I was breathtaking the summer before the terrorist attacks. I often chose to stay at home and not accept invitations for sex parties.

Being beautiful was a power I had never before tasted and I didn't want to get type-casted.

I found myself frequenting hustler bars in mid-town and sold my ass not only for cash, but because I had an itch that simply could not be scratched and the element of danger involved in the sex-trade industry was like stumbling upon a twelve- inch plastic sex toy in a Times Square porn shop.

I screwed chicks too back then. They knew I was gay-- those pretty white girls from Long Island. I told them so while sipping Cape Cods in gay male bars of all places.

They were fag hags who, like Carrie from Sex and the City, were sexually attracted to homos.

"Hi, I’m Francie. My friend Mark thinks you are cute" she proposed while pumping me full of $10 cordials. "I’ll fuck you both," I said with a cigarette dangling from the corner of my cherry red lips.

"Giggle, giggle, giggle."

A few hours later, they took turns blowing me in a penthouse suite overlooking Central park and paid me $500 for just one load of love juice.

I admired how fag-hags appreciate and almost worship the gay species. They are beautiful women who can pretty much have any man they want and find solace in the company of sensitive guys. The only problem I saw in women who chase after men who lust for other men was that queens were only a tease to those pretty chicks.

They were sitting ducks when a guy with no boundaries walked on by. All of those girls I had in the summer of 2000 were hot, cover girl types. Their legs were so soft and waxed to perfection. I loved that the most about screwing women. They didn’t brush- burn me like dudes sometimes do. Their kisses were passionate and the loving making went on for hours. Their breasts were delicate and although I simply couldn’t get enough hardcore male pectoral muscles, liking silver-dollar sized nipples and titty fucking broads was a tasty change for one who thought he had done it all. I loved girls with natural breasts that were not too big. Sometimes I did them with other men, other times my dick got hard for simply a girl by herself.

But when I met Donald, the sex games stopped.


My part-time employers Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade reminded me that no matter what stage we perform upon, it is how we treat our audience that matters. It’s what we give the press to write about that makes us famous or washed-up, has-been performers.


That night, after I blew off the two fading Broadway stars to be with a man who worked as a receptionist, I knew that I was caught up in one of my own stories again.

It felt like something my ego had written out for me, offering a juicy soroy to put down in words one day.

It was a story being told and I was given a front seat in the press room of life.

Love found its way back to me and once again, I wanted nothing but monogamy with a straight guy.

The world of the rich and famous bored me.

My novel would have to wait.

Life is meant to be lived, not watched on a stage, I said to myself while popping fifty cents into the pay phone and calling Donald on his cell.