"Joe...What's His Face" by Andrew Sarewitz
Photo credit: Documerica, licensed under Public Domain and obtained from Unsplash
joe…what’s his face
Caroline’s is a New York City comedy club located on Broadway in Midtown Manhattan. Now, it’s a famous venue for well-established comics. Their original space was on the east side of 8th Avenue, near 26th Street. My friend Joe worked there back in the early 1980s when Caroline’s first opened their doors. I don’t know how they defined themselves within the entertainment stages back then—or if they were initially feeling their way to see what stuck and was profit-making —but Joe offered me two back-to-back weeknights to perform as a singer, which I did. It wasn’t great—I wasn’t great, but it was the beginning of my very short-lived cabaret performing career.
Joe. I met him at the end of the 1970s, under 57th Street, at a gay dance club, Ice Palace. He lied about his age to almost everyone, as far as I know, saying he was 18 in the period before the legal age for drinking was raised to 21. In truth, he was 16, but looked older. Whatever that means. There are a few things I don’t remember. One is whether Joe worked for Ice Palace when we met, or if, at the time, he was coming there to dance and meet men. The second is his last name. It is either Salvatore or Kennedy. I realize they sound nothing alike, but that’s not my memory playing tricks on me. Joe told me both.
These were the early days of my Manhattan citizenship. For me, it was a fantastic time to be in New York City. It was grungy, but it was glamorous, and somewhat dangerous. It was also the pre-AIDS era where bars and night clubs reigned supreme. My being a skinny white boy wearing skin-tight, size 28 waist, Fiorucci jeans (which were well above my budget to be buying) placed me among a trend I fell into without trying very hard. At that age, I could drink multiple milkshakes and eat a couple of donuts and not gain a pound. If you can imagine, Häagen-Dazs was the newest—and best —ice cream that you could buy, hand scooped, from their many parlor locations. My stomach was so flat, I practically had an “outie” belly button. The person I spent the most time with was my dance floor buddy, Brian. He lived on the second floor of an apartment building on West 56th Street. There were four apartments on each floor: Brian and two of his second-floor neighbors, Jon and Kenny, were gay and had known each other prior to moving to New York City. The fourth was a woman named Deborah, who was part of the not-very-successful girl-group, The Flirts. I don’t know where she is now or what happened to her. Brian and the other two neighbors all died from AIDS.
In these free expression and irresponsible days, Brian had been working for 20th Century Fox during the time of the original three Star Wars franchise releases. When the powers at Fox changed hands, Brian and his public relations team were all fired. Suing the company (which made news in the industry trades), though not hired back, he was paid a small, but healthy amount of money as compensation. Brian would later make his living writing for a greeting card company called TNT. When the owner of that corporation died (from a heart attack), Brian took over, naming his own brand of greeting cards, Kaboom, under the TNT umbrella. To this day, I think he wrote the most hilarious sentiments. My favorite (which my mother didn’t find amusing…at all): On the front of the card it read, “I don’t usually send Christmas cards...” When you opened it, the message read, “to Jews.” Somewhere in my apartment, I still have a couple of boxes of those holiday cards.
***
Joe hung out with Brian and me a great deal. He was the age-fusion of boy and man. Handsome enough to model —tall, dark, and extremely good-looking. I don’t know what happened that made him leave his childhood home at 16, but he was not living at his family’s place in New Jersey when we met. I didn’t know where he was staying.
One big difference between Brian and I is that Brian slept with any and every subjectively sexy man whom he could get his hands on. Almost one every night. No argument: Brian was very handsome and frankly, seductively masculine. Full head of blonde hair, blue eyes, and a deep voice. Although it sounds as if he would have been my “type,” I never saw him that way. I was no blushing flower mind you, but at that age of relative innocence I tended to sleep with guys I thought had the potential of being lifelong partners. Another behavioral difference is that Brian loved to trip on acid. He no longer drank hard liquor—only beer—but he loved his drugs. For a while, our nightly ritual was my stopping by his place before we went out. Then I would walk him to Ice Palace as (or before) the drugs kicked in. What he and I had most in common, beside our taste in music, was a parallel sense of humor. God, we made each other laugh to the point of spit takes and tears.
Brian and Joe did sleep together one time when Joe needed a place to stay one night, which, to my knowledge, was the extent of their sexual relationship. Joe told me he thought of both of us as older brother figures. He also said he was “kinda in love” with both Brian and me. I never had sex with Joe. I was very attracted to him, but for me, once someone had slept with Brian, I lost interest. But it didn’t influence my love or affection for Joe.
***
When Joe and I first talked about my performing at Caroline’s, we discussed taking disco hits and turning them into acoustic songs. I remember him and I discussing reinventing the song “Queen of Fools,” recorded by Jessica Williams, into a slow, guitar-accompanied song I would sing as a ballad. We abandoned the idea relatively quickly.
Though my relationship with Brian was often volatile, I would stay friends with him until the end of his life. The definition of the friendship would shift, but we stayed connected until the very end of his time on earth. But Joe drifted out of both our lives. Not just from us, but from most who knew him during those disco and smoke-filled nights.
Before it all came to its inevitable finale, at Blue Jay Diner on West 57th Street, Joe confessed why he had given me two different surnames. He had been in gay pornographic movies and didn’t want me to know —he thought I might recognize the last name he used when doing porn. I never questioned the circumstances—whether he did it to survive, or if it was something he wanted to try. Whatever negative press you heard or read concerning the porn industry—particularly straight porn—there was (and I assume still is) a percentage of performers who liked doing it. Decent money, but an odd celebrity label for particularly gay porn “stars.” This era introduced a new, questionably talented, group of men to fame. Bartenders, porn performers, male strippers, and even hustlers. Porn came out of the shadows and found legitimacy launched by the out-of-reach glamour of night life—at least that’s my opinion. Places like Studio 54 and Ice Palace, where the blueprint for bartenders was to be a steroid-injected muscleman with movie star looks, changed the current sociology from being “looked down on” to “stared at with envy.”
Years later, I heard through the gossip mill that Joe moved to the shores of New Jersey—Asbury Park area, I believe—and married a woman. I don’t know a thing about their marriage, other than it was apparently true. I don’t know if it was a real marriage or something he thought he needed to do for some reason. I would like to say I wouldn’t judge such a decision, but if it was identity denial on his part, I would have harsh feelings about it. But I don’t have the answer.
A few years back I started to look for some of (if there is more than one) Joe’s porn movies. Though I’m not a big pornography viewer, I found a “vintage porn” movie starring Joe during my process of watching numerous movies. Oh, the hardships of research. It was a young Joe—who either hadn’t grown hair on his chest yet or had shaved it all off. I used my iPhone to snap a few stills, so I’d have something to remember him by.
***
Joe died over 20 years ago. A drug overdose. Kennedy or Salvatore, I keep the only photos I have of him—stills from his short-lived role as a porn performer—copied black-and-white photographs captured from aged celluloid, of a sweet and elusive friend in character. A vague mystery to me, I never completely let go of this man who was a genuine mix of innocence and thick skin, sweetness and grit, love and secrecy. Joe Kennedy Salvatore.
A recipient of the 2021 City Artists Corp Grant for Writing, Andrew has written several short stories (links: www.andrewsarewitz.com) as well as scripts for various media. His play, Madame Andrèe (based on the life of WWII resistance fighter, Nancy Wake, aka the White Mouse) garnered First Prize from Stage to Screen New Playwrights in San Jose, CA, opening the festival in August, 2019. His play Five Men, Four Beds advanced to the Second Round at the Austin Film Festival Competition. Andrew’s sitcom spec script, The White House is a Finalist in the Pitch Now Screenplay Competition.