Terrance Flynn - C’est La Vie

 

So, it's the middle of the 1980s when I arrive at college. Marquette is a Jesuit Catholic university located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My first event is my freshman dorm orientation. And the resident RA gathers all the guys around. It's an all-male dorm, and he introduces himself and he says he's got a joke to help us relax and to break the ice a little bit. And he's like, “You guys know what gay stands for, right? Got AIDS yet?” He was right, the ice was broken. Everyone's laughing, including me, because I'm just thinking, oh man, [chuckles] I've been in the closet for 18 years, I guess I can do another four more. It's not going to kill me.

 

But by second semester, I started getting this reputation that nobody in college wants. I'm known as a good listener. [audience laughter] It's only because that I have nothing to add to the conversation, which is all about my friends burgeoning love lives. Since I lack one, I become this repository for all of their dating details. And by Valentine's Day, I really was like, “Oh, I just felt like I needed to take a risk and to do something.” So, what I do is I go into my dorm room, I locked the door and I did the 1980s version of googling something, which is to dial 411, the number for information. [audience laughter] And a woman answers, and my throat just goes bone dry. I mean, I'd never come out of the closet to anyone, not even some voice on the phone. It's the 1980s. You just didn't do that kind of. It wasn't a thing yet. 

 

The thinking was like, “If you're not caught red handed being gay, why would you just turn yourself in?” So, I just hung up the phone. But I didn't have the information I needed. And so, I paced the room and I summon my nerve, I call back. She answers again. Sounds like the same lady, maybe just a little more annoyed. I'm able to get out like, “Is there a way that you might tell me the name and address of a gay bar?” There's just this silence. I'm sure she's going to hang up, but mercifully, she just mumbles this name and address, and then she hangs up. 

 

And that very night, I am standing in the freezing cold, industrial south side of Milwaukee and I'm just staring at this really dimly lit door. There's no name on it. The numbers are peeling off and I'm thinking to myself, how can this dump possibly be a gay bar named C'est la Vie? [audience laughter] I walk in and there's a handful of mostly older men there. They're standing around drinking and smoking and pretending really badly to ignore each other. And I think, well, why don't I join them, my people, all 10 of us. I'm sitting there. And after a while, I just realized that it's not going to be the night where I'm going to meet the love of my life. That is, until the door opens and this other guy comes in. 

 

I was just so relieved. I remember thinking like, man, I did not know gay men could look like that. This guy, above the neck, he looked like a young Kennedy. He had this square jaw, and this cleft chin and these really intelligent blue eyes, and this windswept blond hair, like he'd been sailing or canvassing. [audience laughter] But below the neck, he was just all blue-collar realness. I mean, he had on a factory uniform with these chunky work boots and he had this work shirt on with his sleeves rolled past these Popeye like forearms. And no coat, listen, no coat in February in Milwaukee is really saying something. What it said to me was that he probably had a car. [audience laughter] 

 

He obviously had a job and maybe he had a place to go back to. And so, he walks over to the bar, and I think there's going to be a stampede to get next to him, but there isn't. So, I do. I go stand next to him and he orders a whiskey. So, I order a whiskey, which I hate, but who cares. [audience laughter] And eventually, our elbows make contact and he doesn't pull away and I don't pull away. So, there's this moment that there's this warmth building between us. I think, let me just try something here. And so, I moved my elbow slightly. When he moved his in response, it was just like the best male conversation I never had. [audience laughter] I mean, to me, it was like a relationship, being that close to an actual handsome gay guy. 

 

I was so close to him that I noticed this wonderful smell. I thought it was mistaken at first, but there is no mistaking the iconic smell of chocolate. I mean, in a bar that just reeked of chain smoking and too much Stetson, this guy smelled of chocolate. It made him seem familiar, almost approachable. I wanted to say something to him, but all I could think of to say was like, “Is that you that smells like cookies?” [audience laughter] which is so weird. I'm so glad I didn't say that. But I did smile, and he just gives me this look that was pure confidence. There was just nothing extra in it. 

 

He looked like a guy who knew what he wanted to be doing. What he does is he orders another round. He comes, picks him up, and he turns around, he looks at me and he walks away. And in the bar mirror, I see him give what I thought was going to be my drink to some other guy in a brewer's cap. They chat for a while and they leave together. I was pretty disappointed, but I thought, all right, I'm going to go back. I go back the next weekend, he's there and I'll be damned if the exact same thing doesn't happen. And the weekend after that, and so on and so on for I don't know how many weekends. The only thing that's different, is that he just gets faster and more efficient at picking guys that aren't me and leaving with them. 

 

And so, during this whole series of rejections, I get to know the bartender as you do in those situations, and I said to him, “What is the deal with that factory guy?” And he's like, “Oh, is he your type?” And I'm like, “Yeah, he's my type.” And he's like, “Well, we call him E.T.” I was like, “E.T?” And he was like, “Everyone's type, honey, not just yours.” [audience laughter] And then, he proceeds to tell me that the factory guy's type is actually dark and skinny, like the bartender. I had to admit I did notice that. So, I think, well, okay, if I'm not going to be with the factory guy yet, maybe I can be like him a little bit, at least copy his style, I can be hot like him a little bit. 

 

So, I think, well, what I'll do is I'll start with the shoes. I went back to campus and I bought these chunky work boots at the Army Navy surplus store. They slowed down the way I walked, [audience laughter] and made my walk more of a lumber and I bought these tight work shirts. Because the factory guy was muscular, I started working out. Even my friends noticed a difference. When one of them was like, “You're not such a good listener anymore.” I knew I was getting somewhere. [audience laughter]

 

A couple months later, I get a buzz on campus and I think, let me just go to C'est la Vie. So, I went to C'est la Vie. I have to say, the first time I was feeling kind of hot, let’s say warm. I go in, and the factory guy is in the corner and he's drinking alone, but he looks somehow different. I think it's that he's drunker than I'd ever seen him. But most really handsome people, it only suits him. So, I turn to the bar and I order two whiskeys, because that's going to be our drink. I'm feeling like maybe I wasn't ready before. It was just that, as easy as that, there's something faithful about this night. I pick up the whiskeys and I turn around just in time to see the factory guy do something I'd never seen him do before, which is to leave alone. 

 

I just wanted to take those two whiskeys and chuck them at the closing door. I mean, to him, I wasn't even better than nothing. I wasn't even like consolation prize material. So, I drank the two whiskeys, which I was acquiring a taste for by then, and I left C'est la Vie and I never went back. [audience laughter] And college ended, the 1980s ended and I got my ass out of the closet and I took my slightly better body and I moved to New York City and I got a job teaching English as a second language in Washington Heights. I had an apartment and friends and roommates and even my first serious boyfriend. 

 

I'm teaching one day and what I did was I tried to expand my student’s vocabulary and comprehension by using the TV. We'd watch current events and get new vocabulary that's ripped from the headlines. So, we were watching the TV doing this, and there is this news bulletin that breaks out of Milwaukee. And it shows this guy and he's got his hands behind his back and he's doing this perp walk. There is this close up on his face, and I'm like, “That's him. That's the factory guy.” It's not every day that you see an ex-crush get arrested. [audience laughter] It's not like I was proud of it or anything, but I was a little bit excited. So, in my class, I'm like, “I know him. I know that guy.” 

 

And then, I had to sit down because of what they showed next, which was it was a hazmat team in gas masks and they were hoisting these blue 57-gallon drums down some steps. The drums were later said to contain acid and the un-dissolvable remains of Jeffrey Dahmer's love life. [audience aww] My students struggled to comprehend this story. I mean, everyone knew the term, serial killer, but other words escaped them, like Rohypnol and stench. And the words with cognates, they just got right away, like dismemberment and decapitation. But the word that just brought the silence down and this chill in the classroom was cannibalism. 

 

And 11 of Jeffrey Dahmer's 17 victims spent their last unimaginable moments of their lives in Room 213 of the Oxford apartment building, just a short drive-up Wisconsin Avenue from C'est la Vie. They were all young men of color. They were his type, as the bartender had informed me. I was feeling nauseous and just confused, trying to take in this information. I stand up and I turned off the TV and I just canceled class and I decided I'm going to walk all the way home to Chelsea. It take me like two hours, but I had to sweat something out of me. 

 

I felt so confused by what I'd heard. And so, I'm walking along and I thought, I'm trying to keep down the details of this story, which just keep rising up. One of them was that I was right. He did smell of chocolate. It was because he put in these long hours at the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory in downtown Milwaukee. And so, I make my way all the way to the Columbia campus, and it's so, so hot. But mostly, my feet are hot. I noticed that I'm wearing those boots that I bought in Milwaukee six years earlier, the ones I bought to make myself more rugged like him. They are slowing me down, these boots. I don't want to be slowed down, because every time I'm slowed down, I just think of how I yearned not just for Jeffrey Dahmer's attention, but specifically for an invitation to get in his car and to go to that apartment. 

 

I was sure at that apartment that he would jumpstart my love life, but he didn't choose me. It might sound callous, but unlike any of his 17 victims, I was alive and living in New York City and young, and I was filled with ambition and passion and all sorts of ideas about the kind of man that I wanted to be. My first idea was just to go right away to a sporting goods store. I went and I walked in and I bought the first pair of white sneakers. I put them on and I laced them up and I paid and I left. I took the laces of those boots, I tied them together and I just chucked them into the first garbage can I could find. And with each block that I passed, I just left them further and further behind. Thank you.