The Painting of Porcupine City (12 page)

“This story is killing you, Bradford,” he told me, half serious.

Practically snarling, I hunched closer to my laptop.

Like Sauron forging the One Ring, into the book I poured my rage, my agony, my frustration with all mankind—all boykind.
Porcupine City
represented a decade’s worth of malice. Bradley was a thinly veiled version of me, of course, and the small army of antagonists were all the guys I’d been with up to that point—all guys from college. Being out at age twelve had made for a lonely adolescence. In high school even the kids I knew were gay wouldn’t admit it to me or probably even to themselves yet. They didn’t want anything to do with me. And when I got to college and finally, finally found guys to go out with, one by one they’d blown me off, said there was someone else, said they weren’t feeling it. These guys I’d been desperate to meet since age twelve were walking away just because they weren’t
feeling
it.

That anger poured onto page after page and the book boiled and bubbled like a cauldron of angst, one I kept stirring for months while Jamar grew increasingly fearful for my health. When it came time to turn it in it was no longer a school assignment but my reason for living.

It was also, by the due date, very unfinished. I cobbled together a patchwork version of the best parts, turned it in, and got back to work. I passed and I graduated, but my diploma interested me far less than the sheets of paper sliding off my printer day by day—my sheets of revenge.

Eleven months I toiled on the first draft of that bitch and for another six I polished and, realizing how much aimless ranting I’d done, cut it down by 200 pages. Then I wrote another hundred pages and cut most of that down too. I knew being finished would feel like a death, something I’d mourn and feel empty about, so even after the book was done I kept polishing for another six months.

“You really should try to get that thing published,” Cara told me. We were living together by then and she’d had plenty of time to witness firsthand the obsession Jamar had told her about. “If only so you can just stop
tinkering
with it.”

Because finality (I thought of it in some way as burial) was a better reason for publishing than any other I could think of, I wrote to a handful of LGBT publishers whose names were featured on the spines of some of the novels I owned.
Why not
, I thought, when I sent out my queries.
Why not
, I thought, when a few of them asked for the manuscript.
Why not
, I thought, when one of them wanted to talk.

I read the galleys not sure I liked this story of mine. And when they sent me a few complimentary copies I flipped through the first few pages of it sure that I didn’t. Publishing had been meant to be a burial, yet here was the corpse, neatly bound with a cover emblazoned with a stock photo of two shirtless twinks.

“How could you not like your own book?” Mateo asked.

The book was so angry. So
me
. It was like looking in the mirror and seeing someone I didn’t like. It gave me the shivers.

I did some soul searching. With the book in print, all I could revise was myself. I tried celibacy. I got really horny. After eight months I gave in. I remember looking up at the random guy who ended that eight-month experiment for me, and thinking he was perfect. Perfect because all I wanted from him was this. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend anymore—it’d been eight months and all I wanted was to get laid. All I wanted was the thing this guy was happiest and most able to give me. It was a eureka, an epiphany—I actually started crying. The guy stopped quick when he saw the tears—he thought he was hurting me. After we finished I thanked him and moved on. And kept moving on. Practically every guy is the perfect guy the first night, so why ever bother with a second?

My publisher was still waiting for the follow-up to
Porcupine City
. Had been for years. I was waiting too. The problem with one-night stands was that there wasn’t much of a story there.

I told Mateo a version

of that story, leaving out the details of my sexual epiphany for a variety of reasons. But he seemed to get the jist.

“I think you should be proud of your book,” he told me. “Even if it represents a person you’d rather not believe you were. For one thing it captures a moment in time—what you wrote was true at the time, and that’s important. But mostly, it changed you. Made you into a person you probably like better. One who’s certainly happier. And that’s the best we can hope for from art, you know? That it changes you for the better. That it lights up the world a little bit.”

I could tell I was staring at him, could feel moisture drying on my hanging lip.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing. Just, I think that’s the first time you’ve ever spoken a full paragraph.”

He smirked. “Anyway, if anything I ever write on a building changes a person as much as your book changed you, and probably at least a few people who’ve read it, it’ll all be worthwhile.” He raised his can and made an arc.
Fffssshhht
. “I’m not sure I understand the title, though,” he went on.

“Hah. Yeah. A
major
editing mistake. I accidentally cut out the part that explained it. Porcupine City. City of pricks. Get it? I seemed to meet them all.”

“Oh. OK.
City of pricks
. That’s good. Heh.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ve gotta say, though, I think you were too hard on old Beantown.”

“Hard?”

“For example, the part right after the MIT guy with the blue hair breaks up with you. You’re walking through Copley. It’s the part where you overhear tourists saying how pretty the city is. And you realize they think it’s pretty because they’re always looking up. At the statues and buildings and things. And they don’t see the bullshit going on at ground level. One of them doesn’t even realize he just stepped on some passed-out homeless guy’s coat.”

“Yeah, and I just about die.”

“It just about kills you. But you blame the city for that. There’s like ten pages where you basically just bash everything about the city.”

“Well I was pissed off. When you’re pissed off in the city it feels like the city is out to get you, or conspiring to keep you unhappy or whatever. The ground-level grunge was tainting my mood.”

“I’ve never felt lonely in the city,” he said wistfully, as though realizing it.

“I wouldn’t say I was lonely.”

“I’ve always been happy just walking around.”

“Well you’re lucky.”

“I’ll admit it can be a little grungy in places,” he said. “But that’s why we’re here. It just needs a fresh coat of paint.”

Alex came with me

to Newbury Comics so I could grab something for Cara’s birthday. It was the first time I’d seen him since our sweaty weekend together, but there was no mention of our “activities” (funny how when it came to sex with Alex I felt the need for euphemisms). He had plenty to say about his and Jimmy’s activities, though. In a way it was torture but if I hadn’t wanted to hear it I wouldn’t have invited him along.

Alex gave me the details: Apparently Perino saw him that night at the club (around the time I was not remembering the guy with the slip-on Vans) and Perino couldn’t stop thinking about him afterward. Seriously. So it was Perino who got back in touch with Alex, via friend request, a few days later. That just about killed me. Perino, now homeless after being dumped by the guy he cheated on to have wedding sex with Alex, had all but moved into Alex’s sublet. I was sure the relationship wouldn’t survive the remainder of Alex’s short sub-lease, but he was acting like it was a forever thing.

He spun a rack of novelty buttons and touched one shaped like a basketball. “Did you know Jimmy is
athletic?
” he mused, reminded of his jock loverboy even by mass-produced trinkets. “I had no idea he was.”

“He was on the soccer team in college.”

“
Really?
” he cooed. “He’s on this neighborhood basketball team, too. With all these
straightboys
.”

“Amazing.”

“You should come to one of his games. You can sit with me. I won’t mind if you oogle him a little. It’ll be fun.”

“I don’t know.” Hearing about Jimmy secondhand was one thing; watching him run around in swooshy shorts was quite another. I might not survive it.

I picked out a couple of CDs for Cara and after dropping Alex off I stopped for a cake. The cake spent some time crammed in Mike’s tiny fridge while he helped me work out my Perino tension in his loft.

The work day was almost

over. I was zoned out at my desk with my headphones on, waiting for the last two hours to tick by. If you keep moving windows and folders around it gives the impression of doing work. I rubbed my eyes. I still had a bit of a hangover from Cara’s birthday rager last night. Suddenly Mateo was beside me and I was awake. He was like a jolt of Brazilian coffee.

“Oh—hey,” I said, tugging out my headphones. “You caught me dozing.”

“That’s
my
trick.” He helped himself to a pen from my desk and wrote on a Post-It. His fingers were yellow today. He peeled off the note and stuck it to the bottom right corner of my monitor. “That’s where I live. Meet me at midnight. We have business in Charlestown.”

“Tonight? I can’t tonight. I—have a date.”

He straightened up just noticeably and his radiance dimmed by a watt. At least I thought it looked that way. “Ah. Who’s the guy?”

“No one. This guy Mike.”

“OK. Well.” He touched the Post-It. “For future reference, then, right? We’ll do it another time.”

“Sure. I’m free pretty much any time.”

He nodded. He stood on his toes and peered over the wall of my cube. “Think Larry’s looking for me.”

“Hey, can I get your cell number or something too?”

“Sure,” he said, then: “Didn’t I give it to you already?”

“No, we’ve been kind of old-fashioned.”

“Right. Well here.” He plucked the Post-It back and added his digits under the address—small letters and numbers in clumsy penmanship that looked nothing like the grandiose fonts of his graffiti.

“For future reference,” he said again, reattaching it to my screen. “Have fun with Mike.”

I watched him go, then rolled my chair across my cube, grabbed my messenger bag. I took out my phone, rolled back to the desk, and programmed in his number.

Later in the evening, after I canceled on Mike, I used the number to tell Mateo I was on my way.

Not all the houses on

his street had their porch lights on so it was hard to read some of the numbers. The wrinkled Post-It on the passenger seat said 35. When I was in that range I kept an eye out for the gray Civic with the new battery. After a minute I spotted it parked on the street. The car was familiar in a way that tickled me. I’d been under the hood and, more importantly, in the trunk. If not for that accidental discovery I would be in bed with Mike right now. Mateo better make it worth it.

I idled beside the Civic, leaning to the passenger window to peer at house numbers. None of these houses looked familiar, even though Mateo and I walked up this street the first night we went out. Had I been that spaced-out that night? Or—not spaced-out, but rather, singularly focused? Yes, probably.

There was an empty space behind his car but it was small and I didn’t want to try squeezing in. The last thing I needed was to ding his bumper.

It was OK just to wait. The street was quiet and I could stay where I was for now. The number of the closest house was—OK, good—35. It was red brick with white shutters, tall and narrow. Three floors, or two and an attic with windows. I craned my neck to see up, wondering if he lived at the top.

The little front yard, with its short walkway and stone steps leading to a small porch with iron rails, was filled with carefully-tended flower beds and two bushes bursting with yellow forsythia.

Mateo’s house. The home of Dedinhos. I had no memory of it, even though he almost certainly pointed it out when we were walking to his car. But of course whenever he pointed at something my eyes rarely went beyond the tip of his finger.

I was about to text him when the front door opened, and then the screen door, and Mateo lifted his chin at me while he shut both doors quietly behind him. He came down the steps and tried to get in the car. I scrambled to unlock the door.

“Nice house,” I said as he got in.

He reached around and dropped his clinking backpack on the backseat. He was wearing a sleeveless gray hoodie and long black shorts, with tall black socks pulled up so that between shorts and socks there was only an inch or two of skin visible. It struck me as a tad silly in a way that made him less intimidating.

“Thanks.”

“Which window’s yours?”

“Third floor. Attic is done over. I rent it.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s fine. Between work and—nighttime stuff, I’m not here much.”

“Yeah. Who lives below?”

“A woman and her daughter.” He yanked his seatbelt across his chest and buckled it, fingers coming magnificently close to my thigh. “Oh—you can start driving.”

“I don’t know where we’re going.”

“I’ll show you.”

In the passenger seat he was even quieter than he’d been elsewhere, seeming totally unlike the person who was expounding on art philosophy the week before. He looked out the window mostly, directing me at intersections wth flips of his finger. Although he was still doing the navigating, this was the first time I wasn’t just along for the ride. Tonight, significantly or not, I
was
the ride. It altered our dynamic just enough to make me giddy. It was as close to equals as we’d been. We were becoming partners in crime. Literally. The only thing that seemed likely about having me drive was that he planned it that way. To bring me in.

He’d said we had business

in Charlestown, and that’s where he led me. When he told me to park I pulled into a space between two white sedans.

When I got out of the car I spotted right away the glowing obelisk of the Bunker Hill Monument beyond the roofline of a row of houses. I wondered if that was part of our business in Charlestown. The Navy Yard was nearby too, though I wasn’t sure where. We weren’t going to paint on the U.S.S. Constitution, were we? That would make tagging the Zakim Bridge look like child’s play.