The old Cock at 12th and A, though it has been closed for two or so years now, replaced by the new Cock at 2nd and 2nd, still is present in the memories of so many people, is present in just about any conversation of the Cock. Someone will lament that though it is fun, though it is trashy and cruisy, it is nothing like what it used to be. When the new Cock opened, it was supposed to be a physical recreation of the old Cock, having lowered the ceiling of the old Hole and changing that bar's dimensions, and though there were lots of nice little touches, details gotten right, it was all still wrong, a poor facsimile of the thing that used to be.

Last night, I went to yet another recreation of the old Cock. Deitch Projects had been decorated to look like the old Cock for a performance by the Scissor Sisters. The walls behind the bar were right, painted black with glitter on them, the glitter that shining in squalor seemed to not only be an analogy for the place and the magic that could happen there but also seemed to in drunken, horny moments promise things with those little dots of reflected light, shifting as you did also, walking around the perimeter of the bar, seeing who or what was on the benches, the light shifting, glowing over that person, then this one, then that. Walking into that bar, it was always that muted glitter in the dark bar that let me know where I was, that made me both giddy and nervous about the night to come.

The old Cock holds a very special place in my heart, more so than any other bar dead or living. It was one of the first, if not the first, gay bar that I went to in New York. A week or two after moving here to New York, Niki, my host, had finally gotten over her sickness and took me on a Monday night to the Cock. I had an amazing time and understood why I had moved to this city when I was there, that this is what I had been seeking, fun music being played in small dirty bars where I could get wasted on various substances and potentially end the night with sex with someone, if not punctuate my night with sex with someone or someones there at the bar, in one of the corners or in the backroom when it was open. After that first visit with Niki, I returned again just about every single week, Mondays being the night with no cover, oftentimes by myself for the first couple of months living here, and then often with Joe after getting off from work at the Strand.

The bar was always filled with smoke, everyone smoking probably more so than they otherwise would indoors because they could and because it was then illegal in New York and this was one of the few bars where that law was ignored. There were nights in the summer, hot, hot nights, when occasionally their air conditioning system would break and they would crack open the door on 12th Street and have industrial fans blowing against the dancefloor. I would always try to dance in front of those fans, in love with dancing even in the heat, and in love with how sweat felt when cooled, pressed against, by the touch of these fans. The dancefloor was also normally covered in urine as the urinals seemed to be broken and overflowing just about every night.

And all of this was absent last night, but was evoked none the less by its absence, by nitpicking and looking at this re-creation, thinking of what was missing and what the specific things are that make a place a place. Justin Bond, in his introduction, drunkenly got at some of what was wrong, commenting on the lack of Puerto Ricans. There was something odd and mildly disconcerting about this place, the old Cock, being brought back into being for so many white people, old ones, rich ones, female ones. The presence of suits and cocktail dresses on some of the people were part of the problem, that there was distance and this was spectacle. Through nostalgia and the deep pockets of Jeffrey Deitch, this important memory of mine and of apparently lots of other gay New Yorkers was turned into a conversation piece, an evening's entertainment, for people that probably never experienced the original thing and probably would never have appreciated it then, are only able to do so because it is in the safe, neutered context of a gallery space.

The "Watch Your Wallets" signs that used to be stapled up all over the glittered black walls were absent also. And there are these details, small as they are, that were that place. Your pet died and your parents bought you a new one just like the old one, but it wasn't anything like the old one and you knew it, knew every little detail about the new one that was off, knew something then, even at that young age, about the distinct qualities, subtle as they are, that make things things.

The space of the old Cock is still tenant-less after these couple of years, still sits empty at that corner, and I walk past it often, walked past it later last evening on my way to a house party and thought about the thing, about the thing I had seen at Deitch, the differences, and the almost magical qualities that particular spaces possess. I like it empty, the space. It reminds me of Tom Burr's "Blackout Bar" piece. I am able to see the thing empty of the life that made it and am able to project my memories onto the thing, those moments dancing or that night in a bunny outfit, Halloween, getting blowjobs from people left and right in the backroom, am able to recreate those things when I see the empty building, to relive those things and mourn the place's absence, the more so when these re-creations are seen.