But you weren’t safe from my father’s abuse. No one was.
A famous musician used to come in The Store. An earnest, singular talent. He’d come in with his daughter. One day my dad shouts across The Store that the daughter was getting “fuckable.”
I crawled under a table, no idea how my mom or the singular talent reacted.
There were thousands of moments that made me crawl under a table.
My dad’s spectacular bursts of anger and random acts of aggression were as much a part of The Store as the double Dutch door.
Actually, Casko and Willy were safe from my dad’s abuse.
At The Store there were no rules for them. Order off the menu; hell, don’t order at all. It didn’t matter. Special diet, no problem.
Casko and Willy could have taken a shit on the floor, sprinkled sawdust over it, skipped past a line of customers, and my dad would have smiled and offered them some brisket that was just fresh out of the oven.
Bruce Mailman had a nasal voice and was proud to be gay.
He was managing the Village Gate, and hired Casko to help do some construction work.
Casko had quit Bell Labs and was running his own company called Fun and Games Repair, which was mostly Casko doing contract demolition work.
If Casko said something would be done on Tuesday and cost ten dollars, it was. Sometimes it was done on Monday and cost nine.
So Bruce and Casko got along.
Meanwhile, Bruce had a dream. On St. Marks Place, there was a Turkish bathhouse that was run-down and had long since turned into a gay bathhouse.
What is a gay bathhouse? It’s a bathhouse where men go to sit in a sauna, and there are rooms to hook up. This was before AIDS.
Bruce’s dream was to renovate the St. Marks Baths and create the largest gay baths in the city.
Casko said he would do all the contracting work for free in exchange for part of the business.
Imagine a hospital and all the sheets they use each day. Imagine what it takes to keep the sheets clean. Washing and folding machines. Pumps and power. The Baths needed this, too. Casko built an industrial laundry. He got all the building permits, and solved hundreds of other problems.
The New St. Marks Baths were a huge success, and so was the partnership.
With money pouring in from the Baths, Bruce bought a grand theater on Second Avenue. It had eighty-foot-high ceilings and was once the Fillmore East.
Just changing a lightbulb in the place was a big deal. Bruce wanted to turn it into the largest gay nightclub in the city.
Casko flew to London to see discos and went to Philadelphia to pick up an eight-ton, $50,000 planetarium projector.
The theater became known as the Saint, and the stories of its creation and existence could fill an enormous loft building on Fifteenth Street.
But Casko never told me these stories. I get the kiddo voice from Casko as well. He is still alive and is now “the world’s best grandpa” with a shirt to prove it. He volunteers for the Red Cross, preparing schools and hospitals for hurricanes. And he is still on call if something breaks at The Store, if we need a 220 outlet, or advice on what is wrong with the walk-in fridge.
Casko was there from the beginning. The first day my father owned The Store, he and Casko set to cleaning out the basement. A giant rat ran across the floor. Casko said, “Kenny, give me the shovel.” My dad did, but regretted it right away. “Wa-wa-wait, give it back, what am I going to protect myself with?”
Casko killed the rat with the shovel, and it became clear what was going to protect my dad.
When my father wanted to turn The Store into a restaurant, it was Casko that made it possible.
Casko had a friend named Andy who was in the beverage business.
When Andy couldn’t get his wife pregnant, he asked the doctors why. They said that the temperature in his scrotum was too high for his sperm to live.
“That’s it? I’m in refrigeration. I can fix that,” Andy replied, and created a jockstrap to keep his nuts cold. His wife got pregnant within a month.
A large Hilton hotel in Midtown had three bars. Floors away from the bars, Andy set up a room that supplied all the alcohol.
The room was the first of its kind. Liquor was dispensed by pipes and computers to the bars below. The computer accounted for every drop of liquor that left the room, calculating what the sales should be.
It was created to prevent bartenders from stealing. It worked great and was widely replicated. But bartenders found it was simple to get around. They would bring in their own liquor, selling shots off the books.
Eve’s uniform
My mom’s tip cup was an oversize glass beer stein decorated with a St. Pauli Girl decal—we had St. Pauli and Sam Adams on tap.
When I was nine, she taught me and Minda to pour draft beer. It wasn’t easy. You had to tilt the glass just so to get the right head.
It was twice as hard because all our beer mugs were shaped like cowboy boots. This was typical of all the decisions my parents made.
Her tip cup lived underneath The Store’s pink counter, across from an old art deco fridge we kept the milk in.
The milk fridge had silver-framed glass doors with big “Bride Stripped Bare” cracks. My dad would repair the cracks with fiberglass and resin kits that were meant to fix holes in boats. We had a special toolbox that smelled like rotten eggs, full of Krazy Glue, epoxy, mesh fabric, rope, and stir sticks. Everything was always falling apart. Valves on the faucet constantly leaked and were replaced.
Games of truth or dare always involved our main freezer, which gave electric shocks whenever you touched it.
The slicer and juicer couldn’t be used at the same time. If they were, all the electricity went out. My mom kept a bowl of flashlights, so people wouldn’t have to eat in the dark. Our vent fan to the roof was homemade and needed the grease scooped out every other week. The little clips that held up the shelves inside the milk fridge would break, spilling pies and salsa on six-packs of beer.
My parents would glue it all back together with duct tape or fiberglass, and The Store would keep spinning.
The tip cup always had quarters. I wonder now if my mom left them there for us to gamble with Willy.
Tic-tac-toe was played before and after school. I can’t remember a day at The Store without Willy.
He was always in and out. Usually with a dustpan, toilet snake, or some other accessory.
Kenny, I’ve got an idea for a movie.
“What’s the idea, Will?” my father said.
It’s a western. A cowboy walks down the stairs. As he comes closer you notice his cock hanging out. It’s huge with a throbbing erection.
“What happens next?” my dad asked.
That’s all I have so far.