Back in the day, me and my large British/Scottish boyfriend lived in a quaint "mixed-use"* residential neighborhood in Denver that had a supposedly thriving bordello operating out of the old house next to our small apartment building, pictured here: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7423312,-104.9634647,3a,75y,273.09h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srZ3cLJcEAi2acpMNLcmhpQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656. Our apartment is the one now decorated with Tibetan prayers flags on the balcony, a true hippie symbol for the mountain adventures of the rich and white "out west" that cleverly masks their true intents of pot smoking and low-level employment behind a handy pseudo-spiritual symbol borrowed from another culture, "slacker"** staples both.
Of course, the house faced the other side of the building from our apartment, the side with the rowdy gay boys who kept to a more nighttime schedule than ours, but suffice to say, a genuine "shock factor" was in effect. It was then (and now) a beautiful old house better suited to the upscale remodeling of a rich gay architect and his journalist partner, which I'm happy to see has now happened. Denver has always had stunning old houses and plenty of parks, but just like New York City, that doesn't mean crime isn't happening practically beneath your feet. Kent and I were the more "regular" duo of the square Mod-style building we lived in. "There are three 'gay boys' living there, and they're all named 'Rick'! Even the two boyfriends! Ha!"
It was funny, but true. We were the only straight couple in a building full of gay men, but because of our different lifestyles, we barely saw one another, and there was no common laundry room to meet in. "Downstairs Rick" was a nice, quiet, blond man, devoted to his mother (I know), and his cute little lapdog that was very well-groomed (I KNOW!). He was home all day on disability benefits and his father's inheritance, and the upstairs couple was way rowdier than us. Kent could hear them arguing late at night and knocking stuff around, but not me. I'd been diagnosed with deafness by then, which made for easy nighttime sleeping, though not for my hearing partner.
He had the early morning run to do with our Mal, Ted, which meant that he was up by 5 a.m. every weekday morning, with me waking up at 7:00-7:30 a.m. for my downtown newspaper job that I either walked to, or, if it was a nice day, rode our purple motor scooter to, so I could walk TeddyBear for lunch. But, that was our particular schedule. Just like the projects down the block with the liquor store right across the street, stuff changed when we weren't around or awake to see it, which meant that the gay boys living on the other side of the building and the man home all day knew way more "dirt" about nefarious goings in the neighborhood than we did. We were either: 1) asleep 2) walking Teddy or 3) away. And that was it.
After a few late night scuffles that had Kent concerned, he asked the guys upstairs about all the banging and knocking he heard going on late at night, and he was the kind of dude who got answers. "What're you doing up there at night anyway? Making furniture?!" It was an old joke that he turned into his version of what he called "a polite chat", which meant that he got what he was looking for in a conversation as a strong man, or he'd pick you up and throw you across the room. It wasn't subtle, but as a master electrician, it was sometimes necessary with the under-educated people he worked with. As it turns out, "the boys upstairs" were the perfect working-class gay cliche, because that's exactly what he said he was doing: finishing up some chairs he made for a gallery show downtown. Well, that's certainly "arty" enough for this area!
I'd met Kent at a recording studio, as the art director who helped his band make a CD, and we'd become friends through my ex, who frequented a punk rock bar in town called "The Lair" (https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x876c7eca9ed79609:0xb8f14596ec324d8b!2m5!2m2!1i80!2i80!3m1!2i100!3m1!7e115!4shttps://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname%3D105306774870304916929%26id%3D6295751615571815730%26target%3DPHOTO!5sThe+Lion%27s+Lair+2925+E+Colfax+Ave,+Denver,+CO+80206+-+Google+Search&imagekey=!1e3!2s-bzMva3lPO5o/V18AvPA_7TI/AAAAAAAAL80/pMIezmcZDXwhtQmZU4j_08JFtL8kNim7wCLIB&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf_5nm4tzNAhWDXD4KHRbaAJIQoioIbzAK), that played his kind of music. We lived a creative life without any of the pretentious bullshit, which is exactly the kind of scene our art, design, and music defined for us, as a generation, and it was always working class in tone, which means that poseurs stay far away from us, because art isn't fun if you don't really know how to do it. And we did.
Suffice to say, with our attentions pulled away, it was a bit of a shock to Kent when he came home from work around 3 p.m. to find a full-on cop car scene right next to our building. What the...? The two gay guys from upstairs were already on sight to gossip about it, and Kent caught them at the right time, but not before he made an entrance to our apartment worthy of the full-on rock star role he played between full-time gigs. "Marie! Marie!" At that point, I was working at home during the day, after the two newspapers in Denver bankrupted each other through a poorly-planned competition that was bailed out by the feds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_Preservation_Act_of_1970), and I was illustrating in our bedroom (on my old studio desk) a children's book I'd written as a child that my mother sent to me. "What?" Me and Ted were alarmed. We had a slow life.
And then he just said it. "Hooker stuff is happening!!" What? Like, I couldn't even understand the words at first, because Denver was such a mild place to live for me. Nothing actually happened there, and whenever I walked around, it seemed like it was a dead place empty of people and life, because I didn't actually see people walking around like you normally would in a small-sized city, even at the park during the daytime. It was such an odd feeling, like downtown Providence was completely desolate at night, in contrast to the working days of the week. This felt like that, too. "What?"
"Yeah, yeah! The cops busted some 'crack ho's' living next door!" Huh? I just didn't get it. Where? In that nice old house? We never saw actual people walking around this block, let alone next door. Heck, son. Let's go take a look! He filled me in on some of the details he'd already gleaned from the gay guys, but it was jarring to see it in broad daylight. We stood on the sidewalk, watching the scene. A cop car was pulled up on the lawn to the front door, which meant it was a surprise bust. Kent went over to an officer, and quickly came back across the lawn to talk to me, because I had a very concerned look on my face.
People may talk about New York in an openly disparaging way, but I'd never seen or heard of such a thing happening in or near the excellent spots I picked, when I did real estate as part of a couple. This building was Kent's bachelor pad originally. Still, we never had any idea that such a thing was happening. Not one clue. "They're almost done. They're leaving soon." And that was it. We went upstairs for Kent to tell me the rest of the story, as told to him by the gay couple. "They told me they'd been hearing stuff 'pop off' over there for weeks now." Oh, I see. "Yeah. Like, really loud parties, with some girl fighting some guy on the front law." Ah! That must've been the pimp and his hooker, hence the call to the cops.
And that's exactly what is was. The guys had had enough disturbances from the house next door that finally led them to call the "po po", which is antithetical in "hipster", but they finally did it. "They couldn't sleep at night anymore, and you know how much those guys drink!" Yeah, I did. They were sullen and dark-faced to me, the few times I met them in the hallway, never really speaking to me, but for a dull nodding that was directed more to Kent and his general direction, like whipped puppies avoiding their master. What with the union rip-off job at the newspaper, 9/11, and now hookers, it was time for me to go home. I knew it. I could feel it in my bones. I'd had enough.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-use_development
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacker
