Hank and Oe

So there we were hanging with the cool guys and being introduced to a whole new world! We were in the big times. To me and Casper Feathers was the ultimate in night-life, but Dominick and Chris and John used it was a water hole before hitting the city! OMG!!! NYC in the 80’s was a scary place with the most outrageous adventures waiting to be discovered. Sammy because our bad influence and encouraged us to be bad…very bad! Today Sammy is married and fat…lol. Back then he was a bartender and had an in with the skid row gang. Sammy would find out where they were hanging and we would meet them after the bar closed. Alex in Wonderland was the place to be seen back then. Alex’s had a large dance floor and a second floor with a back room. A back room was a dark room where people would look for love and drop their pants. Sammy tricked me to go into one once. He told me it was the coatroom and they were fixing the light. Like an idiot I stood there, in the dark, with our coats waiting for them to change the light bulb. Oh, that was the beginning of an education I could have done without.
Next to the City bars, Feathers was a church. Hank made sure there were no drugs, no sex and no women. If any of us workers liked someone he banned them from the bar. He loved throwing people out of the bar and watch them beg to come back in. Feathers was the place to be seen back then and he knew it. He would hold it over so many people’s heads. Hank and Oe were a match made in hell. What one didn’t think of the other did. Hank’s was afraid of firing people so he would have Oe do it while he went to Florida. Whenever Hank said he was going to Florida we would all be on edge until he returned. There was always someone gone.
The two of them fought like cats and dogs. They would rip each other apart behind each other’s backs, and then be thick as thieves the next minute. They had been lovers in their youth and where Hank wanted the home life, Oe wanted the teen boys. They were both ex-hair dressers. You could tell when Hank stopped because whenever he would do a wig for a drag queen they ended up looking like Ethel Merman. Oe on the other hand would cut hair at the bar. Hank got jealous when he saw Oe get all these young guys to come to the bar for haircuts so he made me come into the bar and trying to “one up” Oe gave me a perm. I swear that perm is the reason I am bald today! Eddie, who was Hank’s only friend, and I still laugh at that perm. I have pictures of it somewhere. I will post them when I find them.
Oe started dating one of the bartenders, Peter. Peter was a muscle stud with biceps the size of grapefruits. He was underage when he started to work there. Oe found out so Peter became lovers with him so he could get the best bar shifts and keep his job. Oe had competition for Peter’s attention; see no one could love Peter more than Peter loved himself. Oe found out the hard- and expensive- way. When Hank found out he flipped! He could not believe that Oe would lie to him…I am choking too! Anyone who knows them knows how funny that sounds. You would have better luck finding a whore in a convent than finding an honest bone in either of their bodies.
The two of them played us workers like we were chess pieces and eventually the game ends and there is a loser. Some of us may have been sacrificed for the sake of their game, but many of us went on to become winners. I don’t like to remember people with hate so I try to find a good sense why they were in my life. To make sense of them, I thank them for being so hard on the guys because they weeded out a lot of losers.
Till tomorrow Be kind!