God Hates Us All

We walk glove-inmitten down the street to a French bistro. K. insists on paying for the eggs Benedict and Bloody Marys. “A hard-luck case” is how she describes me to the waiter, but the food’s restorative powers temper any injury to my masculine pride. We return to my room, where, this time, we get it right. The sex begins tenderly, the mystery of the new mixed with an intimacy that’s just starting to feel familiar, and ends athletically, our two bodies moving like pistons.

Now we’re holding hands on the elevator, our fingers intertwined. We ride to the fourteenth floor, where Roscoe Trune’s annual New Year’s Eve party is under way. There is no official ownership of rooms at the Chelsea, but the suite might as well belong to Roscoe, an openly gay poet from Savannah, Georgia, who’s resided there for almost as long as I’ve been alive. K., the invited guest, is greeted with kisses on each cheek; I’m treated cordially, but with the subtly raised eye-brows that benefit the arrival of a scandalous home-wrecker. They’d expected to see Nate.

The exception is Ray, who eyes me with a newfound re-spect. “I’ve got to hand it to you,” he tells me. “I didn’t think anyone was breaking that ice.” The pupils of his eyes look like Oreo cookies. I’ll later find out that he— along with most of the party—is on something called “Adam,” a psychedelic that by the time I get around to trying it, a few years later, is better known as “Ecstasy.” What I know now is that every conversation seems to wind up with someone rubbing my sleeves to feel the texture or offering a non sequitur commentary on the shine of my hair. Undue credit, I think, for a guy who simply hasn’t bothered to shower.

Later, while K. dances with a shirtless, muscled man who Ray reassures me is “one of Roscoe’s boy toys,” he proposes that I join him on a weekend trip to South Korea. “I’m going to see a goddess,” Ray says.

“You’re on drugs, Ray. Try to keep it on Earth for us in the cheap seats.”

“I shit you not, man. She’s a real live goddess.”

“Really? Does she ride a unicorn?”

“She’s a Kumari, man. A bodily incarnation of the goddess Taleju.”

“Tally who?”

“Taleju. It’s the Nepalese name for the goddess Durga. A total bad-ass. Like, she’s got ten arms and carries swords and shit. She rides a fucking tiger.”

“I’ll admit that the ten arms present some interesting possibilities, but take it from me: Women and sharp objects, they do not mix well.”

Ray claps his hands. “I’m not saying she is Durga. The point is that Devi—that’s her name, Devi—was chosen from like thousands of girls to be Durga’s earthly incarnation.”

“Kind of like the Miss Universe pageant,” I suggest.

“Exactly! Only a lot more hardcore. She had to have what they call ‘the Thirty-Two Perfections.’ A voice as soft and clear as a duck’s. A chest like a lion. A neck like a conch shell.”

“Every time I start to take you seriously, I remember you’re on drugs.”

“I am being totally serious, man. For ten years, her feet were not allowed to touch the ground. Some dudes carried her everywhere in one of those, you know, canopy things. People lined up to touch them—her fucking feet! —for good luck. Even the king of Nepal, once a year he got down on his knees and kissed those hoofers.”

“And you think she’ll slum with a mortal like you?”

“That’s the best part. She’s not technically a goddess anymore. Taleju means ‘virgin.’ Once she, you know, bleeds, the gig is up—Durga’s got to find herself a new host. And Devi? One day she’s a goddess, the next she’s a woman with serious selfesteem issues. Or what I like to call my wheelhouse!”

“You’re kind of a fucked-up guy, Ray.”

“I know. But what can I do?” He grins evilly. “How’d we get started on Devi?”

“You were going to Korea…”

“Korea!”

“…to see a goddess from Nepal who… Why is she in Korea again?”

“She’s a model. Vicky’s hired her for the same campaign as K. Which is why we’re going to Korea. You can surprise her. Chicks love that shit. It overloads their brain so much that they can only think with their pussies.”

“As tempting as it might be to turn K. into a drooling sex zombie, I don’t exactly have the fundage for international jetsetting.”

“Nobody pays for travel. You can fly for free.”

“No, you fly for free. You’re a photographer. Drug dealers pay full fare.”

“You go as a courier. There are a bunch of places down-town that will hook you up. You find someone that needs something delivered to Korea, and they pay for the trip.”

“A courier? Doesn’t exactly sound like it’s on the up-and-up.”

Ray laughs. “Didn’t you just say you were a drug dealer?”

“The redistribution of certain herbal products is one thing. International smuggling, that’s an entirely different cup of tea. I take it you’ve never seen Midnight Express?”

“I’m talking about legitimate businessmen. A buddy of mine does it all the time. Important documents— contracts and shit. You take ten minutes to drop them off, the rest of the trip is free.”

“Isn’t it, like, a ten-hour flight?” I say. My resistance is starting to soften. “I can’t exactly ask for any more time off from work.”

“Ten hours? More like twenty.”

“I’ve got to be back on Monday. Unless I’m missing some-thing, a day there and a day back leaves me zero time there.”

“You’re missing something,” he says with a stupid grin. “The international date line.”

“Spell it out for a college dropout who’s never been farther than Canada?”

“You’ve got to fly across the date line, which, I don’t know exactly how, but it turns back time. You leave Korea at six o’clock Monday morning, you get back to New York at six o’clock Monday morning. Maybe even earlier.”

“That doesn’t sound possible.”

“Neither did you nailing K. But look what happened.” We both turn toward the dance floor. K. catches us looking at her and smiles back, rolling her eyes at her partner’s enthusiastic interpretation of MC Hammer.

A few minutes before midnight Roscoe throws open the windows. I’m finally in a room with balconies, a la Sid and Nancy. The cold air is bracing, but thick with anticipation rising from the millions of revelers in the streets. Good-bye, 1980s; the ’90s have got to be an improvement. K. finds my hand and holds on to it, and when the clock strikes twelve, we engage in a very public display of affection. A few minutes later, we return to my room and do a few more things in private.

14

NEW YEAR’S DAY TURNS OUT TO BE work as usual, or unusual, as the Motorola buzzes all day. Everyone in New York City has a hangover to nurse, and it’s on me to play Doctor Feelgood. I reluctantly leave K. in my bed and try to lose myself in the flow.

I probably would have forgotten all about Ray’s proposed adventure if chance hadn’t intervened.

A lot of artists take crap for their “creative temperament,” and probably rightly so. But in a city like New York, the cost of living requires its starving artists to be true pioneers: It takes real guts to settle the kinds of neighborhoods where most right-thinking folks would soil their pants if they were caught there past sundown. That’s what I’m thinking, anyway, as a delivery to a metal sculptor south of Houston leads me through what not too long ago must have felt like a combat zone. Only now I see trendy boutiques popping up like weeds through the cracks in the sidewalks. Maybe art really can change the world.

After the Meet-Up, I pass a travel agency that looks like it caters to the NYU crowd. An easel in front lists international fares to exotic cities that sound only vaguely familiar. Where the hell is Machu Picchu? Christchurch? I know from a music video that a night in Bangkok can “make a hard man humble,” but that doesn’t mean I could find it on a globe. Seoul, Korea, is about three-quarters of the way down the list and, at $599, well out of financial