Eddie hesitates.
“Because I see something in you that I see in myself,” he finally says.
He holds my gaze for a long time, my own face reflecting back at me in the lenses of his dark sunglasses. Despite all the chaos and violence of the evening, this moment is oddly, darkly sweet.
However, the sweetness quickly dissolves when I notice something else about Eddie’s face. I haven’t observed him up close since we left our last stop, and now that I’m viewing the man head-on and motionless, I see that the left corner of his mouth is stained red. There’s also crimson smudging along his neck, running all the way down to his collar where splatters bloom in tiny droplets.
“I’m sorry I came at you like that,” Eddie finally adds. “The social media stuff. The hundred thousand followers.”
“Two hundred and sixteen thousand.”
“Whatever,” Eddie says. “It’s impressive … in its own way. I mean, I’d rather be famous for actuallydoingsomething but …” He trails off, suddenly uncomfortable. “You’re alright.”
With that, Eddie turns and continues down the sidewalk. The compulsive part of my brain immediately kicks into gear, commanding me to follow him.
The pounding rhythms grow louder and more coherent as we approach Club Flamingo, higher frequencies gradually making their way into the mix. It’s only now that I recognize this song as the Eddie Michaels and Dua Lipa collaboration I used on my memorial upload.
The place is packed. A handful of revelers stand outside the bar, smoking and chatting and flirting in a way that makes me yearn for just another night on the town. Someone shakes their head when they see us approaching, but another man with bright green hair nods in appreciation. “Nice costume,” he tells Eddie. “You work fast, sweetie.”
A few yards away, I spot a woman dressed up as Eddie in his infamous music video for the song “Down and Out,” a collaboration with the Portland indie band Late Canaries that is widely considered a quintessential out-ofthe-closet anthem.
It suddenly occurs to me why this bar is so crowded tonight. People have swarmed Club Flamingo to celebrate and mourn, to mark the passing of a queer icon by rocking out to all the hits and drinking their sorrows away from dusk till dawn.
Accordingly, a zombie Eddie Michaels fits right in, regardless of any tact or good taste.
Eddie chuckles and pats me on the shoulder. “This is so weird,” he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “You’resupposed to be the famous one at Club Flamingo, but it seems like everyone here knows me!”
We approach the front door where a tall, muscular security guard blocks our path. The bald man is clad in atight black shirt, his arms bulging out of their sleeves as he crosses them over his broad chest.
Eddie speaks before the guard can get a word out. “Where’s your security system?”
“In the back office.”
“Take me there,” Eddie instructs him.
The guard immediately nods, turning and leading us into the club.
We follow close behind, pushing our way through a hallway stuffed with partiers in various stages of undress, their bodies sliding across one another as we plunge into the throng. The music is deafening, vibrating through my entire body.
And it smells like popcorn.
From somewhere above us, purple swaths of blacklight shine down. Smiling teeth become brilliant under the glow, and various clothing designs seem to leap off their fabric with otherworldly luminescence.
My eyes are focused elsewhere, however. Something odd swirls around Eddie, brilliant pink specks now visible in the ultraviolet glow. They drift through the air like neon dust. From here, Eddie looks like a real-world PigPen fromA Charlie Brown Christmas, which was one of just four VHS tapes we had at my first group home.
The dust seems to flicker in and out of existence, visible only under the shine of the blacklight and then disappearing once we’ve passed it. It’s likely the lilting flecks continue swirling around us, but they’re impossible to see without the ultraviolet rays amplifying their bubblegum glow.
We climb some stairs, then emerge into a much larger room, a central dance floor that makes up the heart of the structure. From up here we have an unobstructed view of the churning swarm below, a grinding mass of glitter-smeared, leather-wrapped bodies in a state of absolute revelry. This area is two stories high and wide open, a massive disco ball hanging at the center of the room and casting its dazzling reflections in every direction. Dancers are pushed against the railing in a throbbing mass. Music video projections move and swirl across the scene at various haphazard angles, images of Eddie behind a piano while Dua Lipa dances under a torrential downpour of indoor rain.
Most of the men here at Club Flamingo are shirtless and sweaty, but a fair portion are clad in Eddie-centric attire. Sometimes it’s a vintage tour shirt, other times a sparkling ornate costume of rhinestones and feathers.
A jealous pang shoots through me. I know what it feels like to lose myself in the music, and an evening on the dance floor issomuch better than whatever tonight has become. I once felt like Eddie’s songs were my connection to something bigger than myself, tools of artistic transcendence that resonated in perfect harmony with the grand, cosmic truth of the universe.
As a soaring Eddie Michaels dance anthem churns around me, I have no doubt this is the same recording it’s always been. These are tunes I’ve heard a thousand times before, the melodies and lyrics carved into my heart. The resulting sensation, however, has mutated intosomething unfamiliar. Eddie’s voice sets me on edge, a certain foreboding now folded into it.
Our trio turns and skirts along the wall, avoiding the crowd as we make our way toward the back of the room.
The projected music video transitions to an older tune. We’re traveling back to the mid-nineties now, frame dimensions scrunching inward and imagery bathed in a nostalgic haze of film. The track is “Pacific Coast Highway,” one of Eddie’s few singles that was a complete and utter flop. You don’t hear this cut very often, but on the night of an icon’s death, the whole world pretends they were always on board.
