Disasterama!. Alvin Orloff

’n’ match handmade message tee shirts with ironic vintagewear, iconically rebellious black leather with deliberately vulgar day-glow, or pirate gear with Native American facepaint. Genders were bent, with girls in suits and boys in make-up. Futuristic jumpsuits, wraparound sunglasses, pink and green hair, leopard-print mini-skirts? Why not?! For new wavers, life was a giant dress-up party.

      Michael and I believed all this dressing up was dissidence through dandyism. By abandoning one’s socially-prescribed identity in favor of expressive individualism, one opted out of the power structure. And because culture is contagious, one’s opting out would encourage others to opt out—thus depriving the exploitive corporate monoculture of the docile zombie consumer-workers it needed to survive. Whether the hordes of aesthetically-mutated ’80s youngsters actually contributed to the general tide of social rebellion or just diverted attention from more substantive forms of dissent (like unionizing workers or registering voters) is anyone’s guess.

      Michael didn’t dress like a total lunatic everyday, but he frequently managed to look rather alarming. Inspired by the perversely bizarre costumes of Leigh Bowery, prominently featured in avant-garde fashion rags like i-D and The Face, Michael’s clubbing wardrobe often wandered past new wave hip into the realms of the surreal. Example: he once talcumpowdered his hair white like an 18th-century aristocrat before hitting The Brig, a South of Market S&M bar. Throughout the night he’d oh-so-casually run his fingers through his coif, releasing a cloud of white powder onto the Leather Men. I expected this to result in our being thrown out, but the DJ and bar staff found it hilarious and the black-clad Leather Men were so bewildered they didn’t know what to do.

      There were plenty of straight guys into new wave, but a lot of jocks and jerks regarded dressing new wave as incontrovertible evidence of fagginess, at least for anyone not in a band. Everyone I knew got called “faggot!” so frequently it wasn’t even something we bothered complaining about (and we loved to complain). Mostly, the hateful remarks were followed only by more hateful remarks, but sometimes they were a prelude to physical attack. Once a pack of frat brats cornered Michael on his way to a club and threatened him with a severe thrashing. He only escaped by somehow convincing them he was Billy Idol’s drummer.

      Now and then, Michael and I liked to dress in zany women’s clothes—op art mini-dresses, paisley pantsuits, what have you—bought for cheap at thrift stores. We did this in a spirit of androgyny rather than transvestitism, never bothering with fake bosoms or trying to look like real women. Most of our drag excursions were to gay house parties where we raised no eyebrows. Once, though, Michael decided we should wear ’50s prom dresses (his silver and white; mine, a dusty pink-rose) to see a bunch of hardcore bands. Hardcore was a subgenre of punk favored by guys dressed in ratty denim and flannel with studded leather accessories who enjoyed listening to screamyangry and utterly unmelodic bands—basically punk stripped of all melody, wit, and panache. And speaking of stripped, hardcore boys were always going shirtless. The moment a band started playing there’d be a tangled mass of half-naked boy flesh in front of the stage. A lot of secretly gay punks got their jollies in such “mosh pits,” but Michael’s intent was to mock their ritualized glorification of masculinity.

      As Michael and I swooshed into the On Broadway, an ancient and decrepit theater turned music venue, my body tingled with excitement. The place was jam packed with youngsters, hot, and very, very loud. Faces sneered and scowled as we pushed our way through the crowd looking for some spare space in which to stand. Despite their predilection for radical anti-authoritarian politics, hardcore boys were pretty much all gender troglodytes. Even so, we weren’t being especially brave by showing up cross-dressed. Like the members of any youthful subculture, hardcore boys used clothes to carry on political conversations non-verbally, adopting or avoiding this or that symbolically-loaded fashion. Provided we didn’t do anything provocative (like, say, staring at a cute guy), hardcore boys would likely react to our ball gowns not with primitive outrage, but as people challenged in debate.

      Unfortunately, the club contained a danger we hadn’t counted on: among the two hundred or so kids milling around were at least a couple dozen skinheads. Yikes! Meticulously outfitted with steel-toed “bovver” boots, jeans, white tee shirts, and thin suspenders, skinheads consistently managed to create some manner of violent ruckus wherever they went. And, butchest of the butch, they were not kindly disposed toward gender blurring. As panic prickled through my body like a wave of static electricity, I turned to Michael for guidance. His eyebrows wiggled slightly upwards, counseling, “Be ready to bolt, but not yet.” Showing fear is never smart, so I did my best impersonation of Bette Davis from the film Jezebel when she brazens it out after scandalizing everyone at the a big Southern cotillion by wearing a red dress.

      Before any skinheads could deliver an ass-kicking, Michael and I saw salvation in the form of Jennifer Blowdryer. Radiating the sort of Blonde Goddess sexiness that jellifies straight men’s spines, she was surrounded by a small band of dudely admirers. We raced over, air-kissed, and spent the rest of the night safely ensconced in her entourage. The story wouldn’t bear repeating except that one week later, Michael and I, dressed as boys, went to another hardcore show at the same venue. (Inexplicably, Michael liked the music.) There, to our utter confoundment, we saw two skinheads—one white and one black, though that explains nothing—both wearing prom dresses. What they meant by this is anyone’s guess, but you couldn’t have asked for better evidence that culture is contagious.

       Chapter 8: Rich & Danny

      THE WHITE HORSE IN NORTH OAKLAND was a swell old dive with a dark wooden interior, wobbly maroon barstools, and a scuffed linoleum floor. After a few hi-balls you could squint and see 1936—the year it opened—and the ghosts of gays gone by. Despite its attractively vintage interior, the place struck Michael and I as a bit humdrum after the vertiginous glamor of Manhattan. The music wasn’t up-to-date and there was no back room for insta-sex. Still, by late 1982, we became regulars because it was the only gay watering hole within walking distance of my mom’s house and life without boys and cocktails was unthinkable.

      The convivial crowd at the White Horse was always up for chatting, but seldom did anyone chat me up. (For reasons unknown, my irresistibility to men had not made the trip from New York back to California.) Consequently, I was highly flattered on those rare occasions when someone bought me a drink. Usually, it was a much older man delusionally hoping I’d say, “Oh, thank you for this watery screwdriver, kind sir! Please allow me to offer you the use of my comely young body as a token of appreciation.” Once, though, a pair of young hotties sent me a Heineken (fancy!) and beckoned me to their table.