Rat Bohemia (14 page)

If you sit before the ocean or on a balcony in Chelsea and the city lives before you and the sea and still beyond. There are moments of discomfort when the cold wind blows too sharply or I don't know how to hold her or I can't show my joy. But in between those moments there is a luscious disappearance. She folds into my armchair. I forget I'm on the sand.

(Killer's Soliloquy)

 

 

Alone has such a different feeling now. It is all about waiting for you. There's jazz on the radio. I have a quiet glass of water. The clock says eleven o'clock and I'm waiting for the phone to ring announcing that you've been to work, been home, and are now ready for me. It is a different kind of anxiety, this emptiness. Surrounded by my papers, my mementos, tchotchkes, all artifacts from my life before you. I wait, never patiently as you take your time. I have more of it—more time for rumination. Every day this girl is filled with feeling—wanting to tell you all, and still hesitating. Not wanting to say the wrong thing, never to lead myself into a path of commitments, all of which rest, currently, on the tip of my tongue. These cigarettes are deadly, just smoke them to pass the time. Where are you, Troy? Your touch works on my flesh like a respirator, like Vick's Vaporub. Like a samba when you're feeling free enough, or the sun without boredom or one final glass of beer. I speak my love for you over and over again, but that vocabulary is so limited by words I've heard before—so it's a tense repetition. Speaking love the same way to the same girl night after day.

The radiator whistles. There are holes in the walls of these old tenements. When it really chills outside I can't get warm. Night creeps from all corners. You're the kind of woman that girls want to own. It's so obvious, the possession. You've got a permanent black collar around your neck. Keeping way too busy is the only form of escape that you know. Can I please be your wife? Even if only for
a few days. Then I'm sure to be filled with regret and try to set you free unwillingly. Thirty years old and restraint is too hard to muster. Hey, girlfriend, where are you? My jaw is locked in anticipation. Phone? Ring? Ring! Why don't you? Your arrival is obvious. Why can't I just relax and wait for it? Ho-hum. Yours is the last phone call every night. And it is a guarantee.

Okay, you called. You're on your way. At least a half hour from a store on Thirty-ninth Street unless you take a cab. What else to do but clean out my supplemental dictionary or else try to figure out how to alphabetize on my 1980 IBM computer. How can I figure out anything if I don't know what “field” means. Oh, you're here. Hooray.

I can smell you when you're only halfway up the stairs, but even that warning doesn't anticipate the delight at your appearance. We embrace, sit together, chat softly. I bring you something, something to drink. I have been holding on to an emotion, trying to figure out how to offer it—to offer you a tip of an iceberg as bait to my life. Finally it comes out carefully, seems to appear haltingly. I wait for some recognition, but there's an associative silence instead. Whatever it was I said only reminded you of your own sadness. It brought up something hidden which is now occupying your mind.

(In which Killer receives a letter)

 

 

“What is it, baby?” I ask softly. “Come on, just tell me.” Because I want so desperately to be close to you. I'm trying every way I can.

“Oh,” she said. “I was coming over here and I saw a woman who looks exactly like Anita. You know, that dark, wild kind of beauty. It made me feel so guilty and upset, missing her. When you've been with someone that long, losing them is indescribable. It is like cutting off half my body. It is like I lost myself and I don't know what's left.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I feel so awful,” Troy said, “for all the bad ways I've treated her. For all the mistakes I've made. For all the ways I've hurt her and haven't treated her right. I come home at night and listen to the answering machine. Every night, waiting to see if there will be a message from her. I mean I can't be the one to call her, it would be like torturing her. I can't be the one, but my life is incomplete without her. My greatest fantasy is that she would be in my life every day and I have to find a way to have that because having that would be having everything and without that I … I don't know.”

“Oh.”

God, my apartment looks so shabby. I'm ashamed of it. My clothes are all hand-me-downs. I'm deeply ashamed. Where is my father? I haven't heard from him since April. He and my mother came over to the house. We were sitting around watching the TV news. My mother brought over some Cypriot food. I guess it was
around the Greek Easter.
Domaldos
. Little cakes. Rita came by, stayed for a second. Later my father called me up admonishing me for hanging out with dykes. I guess he forgot that talk we once had. It is so hard to defend myself to my own father when there is nothing to defend. But like every child, I desperately want him to love me, so I sit, stupidly, trying to explain. There is no explanation. Only now, after the subsequent nine months of silence, can I see that he didn't call for an explanation. He called for an excuse.

Sometimes it seems too obvious that women are replaceable. I don't like feeling that way, but I often do. You love one then you love another. Each one is different and eventually you stick with one or you don't. They have the same pros and the same cons. The ones that like me are naïve, gullible, respond to praise, love permission, can never fully reciprocate because they are so goddamn insecure. That's the trap. The same reason they're grateful is why they can never give back. That's why Troy is my dream girl.

Three months into the silent treatment I wrote my mother a letter. I feared being shunned forever. I can sit here in my slum apartment in Manhattan, look for work, water plants, fall in love, and they'll never know the difference. I wrote my mother a letter and asked her to love me. Here is what she said:

“Anita was my life,” Troy was saying. “You know, she's my family.”

(In which a newly employed Troy takes Killer out for coffee)

 

There I am, 11:20 in the evening waiting for my beloved to appear at the door, on the evening of the fourth day of her new job, caked in white pastry flour and smelling of vanilla like Aunt Bea or some other pudgy nonentity. I am waiting for my female boyfriend. It's a beautiful night.

After work and a shower, Troy took me out for a cup of coffee at some strange place with burnt-orange shag carpets and two balconies. I was undergoing a temperament change—being curt, rude, lonely, saying
NO
to others. Everything going every which way.

The air was soothing, like flesh. The two combined put me in a coffee shop diva dream state. A painting of Santa Lucia holding her own eyes on a plate. Café con leche the real way. A little cup of espresso in a big glass of hot milk. I forgot to mention the Puerto Rican folk guitarist singing “Sloop John B” for some friends in the back.

Then we climbed the stairs for two suddenly expensive margaritas on the mouse-infested rooftop bar—walls painted luscious tangerine flesh. Spending money. Me realizing I'd better start budgeting and then me and Troy talking, her telling me something very special. Something I'd only imagined privately and thought I'd have to wait for. Eternally elongated secret hoping.

Now here is what she said, but I'll put it in parentheses which is the written version of a whisper.

(She said, “You shouldn't worry about Anita, Killer, because
my relationship with you is already better than that one was—even though you and I have only known each other a very short time.”)

“I'm in love with you and you'd better get used to it,” she said.

After going home and making love we got into a critical discourse on Americana as global kitsch. We started going one for one with good American worldly contributions and bad. Every time she'd come up with some fantastic Americanist creation like Ornette Coleman, I'd come back with something equally banal like Epilady or Domino's Pizza. We finally converged on the question of Steve Lawrence and Edie Gormet and whether they were absurdly awful or absolutely fabulous depending on whether we were going by my egghead, beatnik, natural wood floor aesthetic or her green shag, East Village fag aesthetic—which we agreed was high on the list of America's greatest creations.

“I knew Clinton was going to be a dog from the televised inauguration parties,” she said. “Especially when he had Aretha Franklin sing the theme song from
Aladdin
. It was all downhill from there.”

“Well, who would you want to have perform at your inauguration?” I asked Troy wistfully.

“You know, something presidential. Like the Village People and Lorna Luft.”

Then we went shopping on Avenue C buying Catholic/Chango tchotchkes and mangos. Bodega candles are part of generic Loisaida culture.

“God, I wish you could see the market in Mexico City,” Troy said.

I've never been anywhere. I grew up in South Brooklyn between Avenues L and M. Lennon and McCartney.

“It's so beautiful,” she said. “There are anal-retentive stacks of thousands of purple cloves of garlic in four or five varieties. Huge bales of sun-blanched corn husks and clear smooth banana leaves rolled out in even piles. Caught some guy with his hand in my back pocket. Piles of wet, brown móle like little towers of fresh shit. Dried fish the size of dragonflies. Wet green catcuses deneedled and raw. Watermelons with red gaping holes of invitation. Deep-fried eggs, fake carnations. Dried tamarinds. Tomatillos in light green husks. Tomatoes in rows like red, plastic teeth. Granadas. Mamey.”

“What else? ” I asked.

“El Aquario Fantastico del Mundo del Mar—which turned out to be a collection of fish tanks on the thirty-eighth floor of the Latino-Americano Building.”

“Troy,” I said. “I feel so close to you and I know you feel close to me.”

All night we rolled around with animals underneath our lips. Troy had a snake wrapped around her teeth and I had a big rat, in honor of Rita, caught passively between my molars. That day purple petals fell from the trees every time a light breeze blew.

“Ate tortillas soaked in red chilis with sour cream,” she said. “White cheese.”

(In which Killer sees the beautiful people)

 

A few things have gone on since then. Occasionally Troy realizes one or more of her life's goals and I am peacefully happy each time. Purely happy where your facial muscles relax and the mirror loses your years. She is kind to me and loving to me, but still looking back. I try to quell my jealousy. She keeps working at the wedding cake factory. I water plants. The rhythm of work. How hard it is to make a living. I'm not some middle-management wannabe. That's not the life for me. One great thing about work, afterwards I'm too tired to be anxious. I knew two girls named Expression and Order. They were a perfect match. They met, fell in love, and helped each other for the rest of their lives. Their home together was comfortable and warm.

One night we went to a party and both knew for unspoken certain that Anita would be there. I watched Troy put on the vest Anita gave her. I saw how much she still wanted to please her. She wore her gift on her chest like a blazing welcome sign. I became very quiet. Wait. When the day comes that too will pass. I will be filled either with rage or with joy. But until that moment I can't imagine which.
Leidenschaff, die Leiden Schafft
. That suffering which passion creates.

“Troy?” I said in bed last night. “How do you think you're going to die? ”

“Oh, I don't know,” she said. “Probably like Sam Cooke. You know, running naked through a hotel lobby chasing a white woman. Hey you, what do you want? ”

“I want you to bind me,” I said. “Gag me, blindfold me, beat me, fuck me, and then I want you to kiss me.”

The next morning I walked to Rita's house so that we could go over to the hospital together. My eyes were wide open—the whole city was a poem. There were young beautiful people everywhere drinking coffee. They're not THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE. They're lovely.