Kyle Dobbs (Humblesuperstar) August 16th
Alan of Upstate
It was the summer of 2015 that I had my first ‘gay encounter’ before going off to college a freshman. Lana Del Rey’s “Ultraviolence” had been released the summer before and I had been acting in accordance to its themes for basically all of my senior year of high school. I would go to school and my internship in the mornings and be a clean-cut good boy, but I was fully reclaiming nighttime as mine, the Dionysian time. It took me a while, but I had finally cultivated a tribe of similarly art-adjacent, quasi-nihilistic friends from the periphery of my high school’s social scene and from the local dive bars that Carmen’s boyfriend Alex’s band ‘Trifecta’ would play. Back then we thought it subversive to be 17-18 and hanging around 40 year old barflies and biker men- we were doing it in an ironic, twin peaks sort of way.
At the end of the year and the start of the summer Carmen moved with her family to Monroe New York, a place that made my own town of Putnam Valley (again, an east coast version of ‘Twin Peaks’) look positively cosmopolitan by comparison. Monroe was tiny and while having somewhat of a town square, the energy there seemed dead on arrival, not lurking in between the tall trees and secret bonfires of home. Monroe had white trash, middling way outside the cultural reach of the city, and a puzzlingly high population of Hasidic Jews that only added to the air of foreignness to the place. Carmen being half Mexican, half Jewish, would land uncomfortably outside of the town’s dichotomy and was therefore desperate to hold onto our group’s solidified dynamic. With college looming for many of us, we had felt the same way.
A number of us would make the hour trip to Monroe and stay over at Carmen’s house which was always in a perpetual state of being worked on (no walls, broken doors, no heating or ac downstairs, etc.), but specifically Cassidy ended up going that summer the most of all. Both Cass and Carmen had decided to volunteer for this local film festival in Monroe that was going to be held at the town movie theater, promising the stars of the film (including real Hollywood celebrities!) would be in attendance. Much of the summer would go by and with part of mine being spent in Spain for two weeks, there was an eagerness amongst the group to see me once more and to have one more great outing before the summer would come to a close.
Things can line up in life as if it were divinely intended and such was the case for the film festival and our summer’s end. Cass and Carmen had been working on the festival for a few weeks then and were eager to share with the group how interesting and fun the entire experience had been and how we’d have to come to the afterparty if we wanted the chance of a real celebrity encounter. I asked what celebrities would be there and the only name that had any recognition for me was Naomi Grossman who had been on a season of ‘American Horror Story’, but back in the tumblr era of the 2010s, the satanic parody of the Ryan Murphy production had a lot of cultural pull.
So I arrived at the town theater for the afterparty that night with our friend Julian in tow, a pack of parliaments to smoke, and some vodka I brought in a water bottle to pregame the function with. We met up with Carmen, Cass, and Alex in the parking lot and discussed our plan of action for the night as we chain-smoked and swigged liquor, all of us except Alex being under aged (aside: in every alternative white trash friend group that's up to no good, there's always the loser older boyfriend who has the drugs and booze and hangs out with literal high schoolers because he’s lost the plot so badly). We teased each other about who was brave enough to talk to Namoi Grossman, and laughed about the fact that Cass and Carmen hadn’t even seen any of the movies that were playing that night. It was another instance of our youthful delinquent bliss, a carefree moment independent of what was about to come.
The vibes shifted that night when Cassidy and Carmen told the rest of us that they had made new friends while working the festival around our age who we’d be meeting. A guy named Alan and some girl who’s name escapes me, but who I feel had some sort of new age style name like Sky or Star. So let’s just call her Star for the purpose of the story. When we walked into the party held in the upstairs portion of the theater, we encountered Alan and Star almost immediately. Like the planned pounce of a jaguar on its field prey. Alan was a goth twink through and through- he was tall and slender, and had the aesthetic trappings of an extremely online soft grunge devotee of the day, down to the smeared eyeshadow, dog collar choker, mesh shirt, and platform shoes. His whole situation screamed ‘bottom with female-style daddy issues’.
no cherubic choir sang out when Alan planted his plumped (no doubt, glossed) lips onto mine. It was all happening to me at a rate I couldn't follow along with, an action taken without recourse or consideration on my behalf, a moment stripped of any agency that was my own. I did not want to be kissing this twink here on the dance floor of this obscure party for this random festival. Alan had seen me and moved in to get close to me upon our arrival as if he was waiting for me there, like he’d known I was coming. I on the other hand had entered the dynamic like a warlord’s concubine, the goth twink’s won prize in battle.
Inhabiting my body once again, mid-attempt on Alan’s part to entrench his tongue into my mouth, my fight or flight instinct kicked in and I moved to the outer corner of the party to sit down for a second of clarity and reassessment- lick my wounds in my prey’s shelter. Who was this random f@ggot trying desperately to jump on my dick? And why did he think he had the agency to invade my field of existence? Carmen came over to check if I was doing ok, to which I bold-faced lied and said I was just in need of a second to sit. I did my best to contain my composure, I mingled, I introduced myself to Naomi Grossman, I taught her how to whip and nae nae (the dance craze of the time), but the entire time I could feel Alan’s presence lurking within the sea of others, his BPD eyes glowing and fixating on me with flickering precision. Going out for a cigarette should’ve been the end to my objectification, a streamlined path from door to car to Carmen’s house to home, but I was naive to think the jaguar was gone just because I got out of the brush.
Alan zeroed in on us as we made our way out for a smoke, Star (or whatever her name was) by his side, the two of them trying desperately like shrieking harpies to get the attention of Cassidy and Carmen, as a means to get closer to me. I wanted to further run and hide but the social niceties of smoking culture kept me planted by the door with my friends. I don’t remember much of the small talk that happened there outside the theater, probably on account of the fact that my brain simply refused to retain it- it was more busy thinking of ways to signal to the group that it was time to leave and that I felt uncomfortable. In that moment I felt spiritually female, constrained by politeness in the face of a suffocatingly unwanted pursuer.
What I do remember from our smoke break is that after officially introducing himself to me by saying “I’m Alan, enchanté” and then blowing me a kiss, Alan kept bringing up the batman series. Specifically the relationship dynamic between the Joker and Harley Quinn. Explicitly stating that I was his “Mr. J to his Harley Quinn” years before the femme fatale would reemerge in the zeitgeist. I recognized this red flag for what it was, but I wasn’t prepared for how genuinely repulsed I would feel having this role play narrative thrust on me. There was something so abject about the fact that he wanted to self-identify with this psychologically disturbed, female Stockholm syndrome victim, and that he was obviously looking for someone to play tight-leash abuser.
Being a traditionally classic gay man, I wanted and lusted after the masculine, especially in a sexual context. Another man calling me “Mr. J” in a girlish, baby voice was not and simply will never be one of my turn-ons. In fact it’s a turn-off, zero compatibility with my tastes. Similarly, I objected to the idea that someone could look at me and ascribe the archetype of a psycho abuser to me. I felt it gross and ridiculous, even if he was more or less doing a bit to gain my erotic attention.
Someone in the group finally mentioned how late it was getting and how we’d probably just move the party back to Carmen’s- a blessing I thought, a guarantee that the night would take Alan and I on separate paths, that nighttime had in fact still belonged to me. What I hadn’t counted on was that Alan’s desperation was stronger than mine, motivated by lust and overtly persistent in a way that I had never experienced before. Usually the flirtations of gay men start off subtle, with a certain look or touch. The lack of subtlety in Alan’s approach both stunned and revolted me.
“Lets not end the party here, you guys can all come to my house, it’s really close, really big and fancy like a mansion and we have tons of expensive liquor.” Alan quickly countered before any feelings of security on my end set in. A lofty proposition he’d just made for my friends and I; go back and drink cheap beer in Carmen’s drafty unfinished raised ranch, or go to the mansion with expensive booze. I’d be out-voted in favor of Carmen’s house, so off we piled into my car and Alex’s van towards Alan’s mysterious mansion, the beginning of what potentially felt like a mass murder plot. Alan and Star, or whatever would of course come in my car, giving me no moment of solace to confide in my friends, no last ditch effort to explain to them that Alan was the devil in disguise, luring us in with the pleasures of man. There was no convincing to be done now, the path was set before me and a passive anxiety came over my person as we got on the highway to Alan’s.
The second major red flag on the night was that it took around two hours to get to Alan’s house, for much of which I stayed silent, quietly wondering how I arrived in the present situation. Wondering how he could possibly lie and say that he lived even remotely close by. I wondered even more if my friends were ok with being dragged out to the true middle of nowhere and if they too thought they could possibly be hunted down and sex murdered tonight. Alan’s house upon arrival was nice and sizable, but no mansion, although it did have a backyard and a screened in sitting area where we could smoke. We walked through the front door and through the kitchen to the basement door where we’d all be hanging out because Alan’s parents were asleep. Who knows if this is true because Alan as we have established is a repeated liar, but according to him, his parents were older retirees who had made all of their money working as actors on Broadway in the 60s and 70s and had adopted Alan in their older age. It was a shame for them to be asleep I thought, for they seemed infinitely more interesting than their archetypically horny and predatory gay son who, at this point refused to leave my side.
We all descended into the basement where we were promised the expensive liquor could be found, but the libations would come along with an encounter of red flag No. 3- Alan’s extensive and meticulously displayed doll collection. Introducing us to his “little babies”, Alan explained that each doll he had hand-crafted, designed, and styled in a gothic-edwardian-meets-dark-pixie aesthetic. Usually I can appreciate craftsmanship, but something about the fact that Alan had these creepy dolls all displayed out in the open with their soulless eyes all in a unanimous perpetual stare that gave me Norman Bates. All the horror movie clichés were lining up, and I had no desire to play the role of the ‘final girl’.
Alan finally passed out a few bottles of expensive wine from his parent’s old wooden liquor cabinet and led us outside to our screened in smoking section. I don’t remember much of the conversation we all had out on that porch, as I had more or less dissociated from the moment. It was clear we’d all be stuck sleeping there that night as everyone couldn’t resist the fancy wine, let alone the fact that it was around three in the morning at this point- the devil’s hour indeed, as Alan had certainly gotten me right where he wanted, which was apparently adjacent to his doll collection.
I silently reassessed my next plan of action as I gently sipped from the admittedly sublime tasting red we were all passing around the circle and then it occurred to me, the red was the answer. My sip became a swig and then a chug as the nefariously brilliant idea came over me- if I were to get so drunk and become so insufferably difficult to deal with, nobody will even try to sleep with me tonight- there was a chaotic brilliance to the idea. I had my support system of friends to take care of me if need be. You might be thinking “weren’t you worried about being drunkenly raped?” to which I say calculated risk, but I knew that I was bigger than Alan, weighed more, and with all my friends around he was less likely to try anything. Plus I don’t know how you could possibly be raped by an obvious bottom.
The next thing that I can fully remember is myself running around Alan’s basement, chanting “you’ll never catch me” over and over while the rest of the group ran around literally trying to catch me so they could get me to sit down and shut up. Clearly I had been successful in my attempts at insuperability because at this point in the night, Cassidy was telling me “I think you need to go to sleep”. Alan had won the “being chaotic” battle, but I had won the “being chaotic” war.
I woke up twice that night, once when I overheard the wet smack of lips kissing, only to roll over and see that Cassidy had been making out with Star while everyone else was presumably asleep (at least somebody was getting some that night). And a second time around six in the morning when I woke up feeling violently hungover and desperately in need of a bathroom I had no idea the location of. I got up from the chair and blanket that had been my little drunken shelter for the evening, and the vertigo immediately set in. I felt my way to the walls of the basement and from there up the stairs to the kitchen while everything seemed to twirl and spin around me in a delicate, nauseating dance. I would not throw up, I told myself, I would only pee. Praying to be spared the embarrassment of pissing myself between Alan’s kitchen and foyer while the others stay soundly asleep downstairs, I finally found the bathroom door and released a toxic stream.
When I woke again downstairs, for the last time, the hangover had really set in, miserably settling itself in the pit of my stomach. It was my prize for my transgressiveness and intolerability throughout the evening. If it had to be my consolation prize then I would carry my hangover with pride. Better that be my winnings for the evening over winning Alan himself, a toy I had no interest in playing with. His self-objectification by way of alt-slut branding was something I could appreciate from afar just not in my face. I think part of it was the fact that deep down I really wanted a trad, straight presenting boyfriend for myself, not someone who was so gay they identified more with women than men. And on top of that I wanted a trad boyfriend because I wanted to be the interesting one with niche tastes who is artistically inclined. I wanted to be the intellectual to some guy’s himbo status. I wanted to be the mysterious star with the beautiful lover.
We all sat through an incredibly awkward breakfast with Alan and his parents- I could barely make it through the bowl of fruit loops in front of me as I tried to keep anything I could down. I did not look at Alan or his parents, but I’m sure they could sense just how fed up and exhausted I was from having been in their strange house for so long. A part of me felt bad for the whole family- Alan clearly couldn’t read social cues very well, and the parents were in the twilight of their lives, dealing with a flighty and impulsive, potential autogynephile on their hands.
Driving back the now three hour trip I had to do with Julian from Alan’s, it occurred to me that I had the right to be pissed over this situation. In some sense this night was supposed to be about me, having my first initial brush with lust in the form of a potential new love interest. Or at least it could’ve been that way, I could’ve had a positive first homosexual romp, but instead I got an unwanted kiss and a stalking presence for the entire night. I felt like an opportunity was stolen from me, an opportunity I suppose I had never considered. “Who will be my first kiss” wasn’t something I really concerned myself with. Maybe I should’ve.
I came home to my parents throwing me a surprise graduation party to culminate my going off to college within the next week or so. Tired, and unwilling to share about the night’s plot, I found a moment to myself in the front lawn while our guests were all on the back deck. Silently I started crying as I looked away from everything I had known up until then. I had changed, but wasn’t ready.
