This week’s contributor’s spotlight is from Marty Sokol (IG: @clubcobra )

“If you’re old enough, say, to scour the world for a cream – or anything to stop the neck creping, you might tie on a summer scarf and head out for a walk, but it won’t be long before shadowy spirits really come up on you – ghosts really, and if you don’t look for them, they will walk right through you in line to make a call on a public pay phone long gone.  

Lines and Lines of people, all over Midtown and throughout The City, waiting to use the pay phone, itself, living on well past the time affordable cell phones had eclipsed their usefulness to the strains of Celine Dion ‘I Will Go On’ warbling down every Avenue, store front & passing car & indeed they did, nearly to the end of the Millennium. 

Pay Phones, the way they smelled like flesh rot.  The way we’d rub it across our shirt and think – ’It’s Fine’.  …Keeping the folding door open with your back to breathe through the pee…

But it’s not the pay phone itself that’s missing, it’s The Lines.  These Lines were miserable, maddening, anxiety induced suffering & they were everywhere, but by the close of the 90’s The Lines themselves were all but gone — absolutely no one noticed.

(The link to buy is here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1503629201?ref=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_4M5994TPRG3EABVFDPNQ&ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_4M5994TPRG3EABVFDPNQ&social_share=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_4M5994TPRG3EABVFDPNQ)

The absence of The Gay Piano Bar is much like that.  It’s just Gone.  The struggle of The American Gay Bar & Nightclub has been well documented.   (Read ‘The Bars Are Ours’ by Lucas Hilderbrand & ‘Who Needs Gay Bars’ by Gregor Mattson) 

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— Only The American Gay Piano Bar had died in it’s sleep decades earlier, not many noticed, really everyone was fine…

…Turn another corner and it’s 1985 Back Bay, Boston, it’s dark, you’re a 17 year old Freshman walking narrow cobblestone streets – cowpaths you were told at orientation.  The friends joining you – you will know forever, whether you see them or even speak to them. 

(Napoleon Club Present Day (2018) Boston Herald)

You walk up to a large Colonial brick townhouse possibly standing since the Revolutionary War – a torch light by the door & a brass plaque ‘Napoleon Club’.

(Original Sign)

Enter a hallway — deep red flocked wallpaper — an actual marble bust of Napoleon on a pedestal, at the end of the hallway a bouffanted woman in the coat check charged you, although, I can not remember how much, or even ever having any money.  She would never ask for an ID & you were in…

Over the years I have looked everywhere for photos or any information on Napoleons – I am shocked at how little exists online.  — So here a quick tour!…. 

There are three main rooms downstairs with a piano & well dressed piano player seated at each one & bartenders formally suited in red vests.  The rooms elegant & overstuffed… Cozy Ivy League Country Club vibe.  A bar in the center room & the furthest, The Empire Room, an actual ballroom with a stage I can only remember being open once.

Men in sport coats with leather patches on the elbows – college professors, art collectors, Men of Industry, Men Of The Cloth even.  These were cultured people.  Drunk, singing, laughing, smoking, sometimes handsy, a little randy & always happy to buy a young man a drink. 

If downstairs was Harvard House, upstairs was Fire Island — Josephine’s was a fully lit, low ceiling Disco, whose walls were inexplicably lined & lit with dozens of black light velvet clown portraits & a room filled with Gay Joy.  Every night the DJ would close with ‘Old Cape Cod’,  a 1950’s Patti Page regional radio hit & the men would slow dance together till the lights came up.

The nights spent at Napoleons were Grand in every way — it’s hard to separate fact from fiction.  …The night we took mushrooms & went to The Ringing Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, ourselves spinning over the 3 Rings in the Nose Bleeds at The Garden & then running to Napoleons only to be greeted by a dozen Circus performers drinking & laughing at the bar — including famed Lion tamer Gunther Gebel-Williams in a fur coat!  

I have confirmed this night actually happened – frankly even I sometimes have doubts & I was there(!) — so I corroborated the lore with my friend David who concurs it did actually maybe happen — but in all fairness, David, on another unrelated night at Napoleons, was, point in fact, accused by the bartender of stealing his rag — incredulous — outraged — I rushed to my friends defense  —  “Why would he do that?!” I demanded.  Later, as we drunkenly walked home towards Beacon Street, David pulled the wet rag from his pocket, waved it in the air & literally rolled on the street laughing.  I was gobsmacked. 

Look, 1985 was a scary time to be Gay & frankly a scary time in general.   Listen closely & you’ll hear the Ghosts of Men of a certain age singing & laughing at the piano.  Most of them had left us by the time I left Boston in December ’88 & Napoleons, well it became condos.

Funny how those men – most likely years younger than me now, seemed so old & funny to us… out of touch — the irony, of course, after so many decades without older Gay Men on this planet, we finally filled that gap ourselves.  

So step on a crack & spin in place — listen to the laughter swirling around us on empty street corners.  Is the Circus in Town or is that David whirling a wet rag?… let me make a call.”

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Marty Sokol is a writer/producer & entrepreneur who owns & operates nightclubs in Los Angeles for over two decades. SokolWorld01@gmail.com

Thank you so much Marty!!!!!