I never attended my 20th high school reunion. Xaverian Brothers was all-boys. The brothers failed me for religion. I didn’t believe in the idea of a god. Brother Karl flunked me for German 101. I never blamed him for my failure. My stutter was hard on languages, but I was the only one of his students to have worked in a Hamburg nightclub owned by the Reeperbahn pimps. SS Tommy was the meanest. The long-haired blonde body builder looked like a pitbull on crack. A week short of Christmas he presented a bill itemizing my affair with a lingerie model.

“I didn’t think she was working for you.” Ingrid never said much. Her overbite was in impediment to conversation. I understood her every word. Stutterer to lisper. In bed we only moaned out passion.

“Everyone in Hamburg works for someone.” SS Tommy wanted 20,000 Deutschmarks.

“Es tut mir lied.” My apology was followed by the handing over of my keys. My BMW was in the repair shop. I had crashed it two night earlier in the forest with Ingrid. She liked fellatio in a car. “I’ll make good for the rest tomorrow.”

‘Morgen’ never came in Hamburg. I left that night on a train. SS Tommy could go fuck himself. The train stopped outside of Paris. I caught a plane for New York. My apartment was empty for the holidays.
I caught up with friends at a nightclub called Danceteria.

Kathy Underhill, Mark Kamins, John Argento, Diane Brill, Rudolf Steiner, Dove, Howie Montauk, Walter D, and all my drug dealers. I liked my drugs back then. Still do, but the other night at the reunion of Danceteria we were drinking Sky Vodka. None of us had drugs. At least no one I knew. it was good seeing the old faces. We laughed, laughed, and even danced to THE DOMINATRIX SLEEPS TONIGHT.

I regaled friends to tales of the club. My fight with Jersey Boys, losing cocaine in the basement, Dove’s protecting me from the Jersey Boys, and rewarding her with a night at my place for her protection. The cocaine protected us both. She was a shim and I was all-man. At least that’s what I always told John Argento the owner.

Everyone else knows the truth.