Bobby

Pat Cleveland

Today I found myself getting a little depressed again because this guy from interview number 3 still has not gotten back to me. I mean that's totally within his pattern but it still got to me a bit.

I also had to stay home in the morning and wait for a furniture delivery. Just an end table but it was tedious waiting. I think it's fair to say that this house is nearly done.

I live in this beautiful house which I adore but that fucks with my head, too, because you would think I was really rich or something yet I barely have a pot to piss in these days. I know it's going to change soon but it is still very odd. I have no idea what the neighbors think. Since the move here there has been a non-stop scene of deliveries and work men, little do they know what's really going on. Meaning, I'm about to lose my mind if I don't get a better job.

In the afternoon I was free and went to a gym in Park Slope. It's a little out of my way but much nicer than my local ghetto gym. I thought I might get some sauna action but nada. The one good thing though about that gym is that the quality of guy in the sauna/steam room is pretty high. My last gym had some real horrors hanging in the steam room. Troll is kind of a terrible word, but when you are in your 60s and very overweight and naked and unapologetic and looking for nookie from somebody half your age...well, it is appropriate then.

I saw something weird in The NY Times the other day. They have a semi-new section with a feature where they highlight some fashion look from the last 20 years. I think it's all photo outtakes from the Sunday section where they photograph people on the street.

Anyway, it was weird, because the times had featured 1986 and they had a picture of Bobby. I had to look at it half a dozen times before I was sure. You know how you think you see someone you know and it's not them but you only thought it was them because you were thinking about them and wished it were them? That's how I felt. Only it was Bobby.

When I was 18 I had all these older gay male friends. They were all 10 or so years older and took me under their wing. One of them was Nikki and through Nikki I met his friend Bobby. Bobby was very cool about fashion and very intimidating to me. But Bobby and I got to be very close and even lived together in my old place on West 16th street for a while. Bobby liked being the mentor and that was fine with me. He loved fashion and all things Pat Cleveland. She was a big influence on him. He had worked as a model booker and had tons of stories about the “girls.” This was sort of at the dawn of the supermodel era and it wasn’t as cliché as it is today. His “girls” were the Halstonettes and the Dicksinson sisters. Bobby was so funny. One of my favorite memories is watching “Lassie” with him, high, and his doing all of Lassie’s “talking.” He was a trip. Another favorite is when he came home from Phillie with these ribs his mother bought from a man off the road. Those ribs were, too this day, the best ribs I have ever eaten.

Bobby left New York and went to live in Paris and he had to go back and forth a lot. I never quite got that straight but it had to do with visas and such. I went to visit him and stay with him in Paris twice. The first time was fun. He knew a lot of people and they were constantly buying me drinks and paying for dinner. I was young and dumb and thought nothing of it but on the 4th or 5th day, Bobby took me aside and said some horrible things to me. He told me that I needed to start paying for food and drink and that everyone was noticing how cheap I was. He actually made me burst out in tears. It’s funny now to think about but at the time it was horrible. Of course, the next time I went I overcompensated and practically paid for everything.

At some point he came back and lived with me. He was always very mysterious about money and I have no idea how he earned it. The entire time I knew him (1986-1995) he never had a job.

But that’s not quite true. Towards the end of one of his stays with me, he took a job at his friend Roberta’s boutique in SoHo. He became friends with this shady girl from Montreal who worked there and they used to smoke joints and speak in hushed tones to one another. At one point, they began stealing from the boutique: purses, wallets, sweaters, shoes. My apartment began to resemble a warehouse. Then, in a matter of days, Bobby left for Paris. I remember Roberta calling me asking me all these questions. I had to make believe Bobby had run off without paying the rent.

Not long after he left, I received a call from the Montreal girl. She asked me if her boyfriend could come live with me for a while.

Idiot me, who always wanted to please, actually said “No.” What went through my head was something like “This must be the guy Bobby said is a real hot, mec but he is a major drug dealer and has some crazy drug dealers after him.” So, for once I opted for common sense. She was shocked. She said something like, “But Bobby’s gone, surely you need money for a roommate?” She sounded so gross and sleazy and after that I knew she was trying to pull one over on me.

A few weeks later I spoke to Bobby and mentioned that to him. And wouldn’t you know he was furious with me! He told me he was embarrassed and I was “so square!” He was disgusted. It hurt me a little but not a lot because already at that point I was older and becoming a bit more self-possessed and confident.

Cut to a while later and I was in love and setting up house on the Upper East Side. I get this call from Bobby’s mother, who I never spoke to before, telling me Bobby’s dying and living with her in Philadelphia.

Now, I don’t know what was wrong with me. Maybe it was shock, more likely I was just being polite, but I never asked “Dying of what?” Regardless, I spoke to him a couple of times and it became clear he did not want to talk about anything other than booze, boys and booty. Weird. But I went along. At some point, I took a very long bus trip to Philadelphia to visit him. It was one of the strangest days of my life. I went to some house he was staying in. It was a pig sty. And he had hardly a damned thing to say to me. We watched TV. We went for a walk. He used a cane. He seemed very angry. We went back to the house. He locked himself in the bathroom for over an hour with the water running. I thought he had died in there. When he finally came out, I told him I had to go and gave him a good long hug. I think I felt a twinge of emotion from him then.

That was the last time I saw him. He died about 2 month later.

I was sad about Bobby and think of him a lot to this day. He would have loved so many of the developments in pop culture, particularly “America’s Top Model.” That kind of stuff was right up his alley. I have no idea how he died. I assume it was AIDS related although, if he had it, he never talked about it or showed any signs.

But one of the things I realized over the years is that Bobby was a fun person to hang with, but he wasn’t really a friend. I look now at the things he said and did to me when I was a teenager and in my very early 20s (and he was 10 years older) and it really was pretty manipulative and wasn’t very nice. I suppose if he had lived we would have drifted. But who knows? It was nice seeing his picture in the paper. He would have loved it.