“Frenchie’s always pricey,” Hank says. “I’m on a budget.”
“I know the bartender,” I say. “The first round is free.”
YOU CAN TELL a lot about a man by how he walks down the street with you. Most men don’t ever have to think about shit like this, how you walk, but with me, with the father I had, I always had to be sure I knew how close or how far that guy was from me. Out of nowhere, my father’s right hand could reach out and cuff me. Make my ear bleed. Or my nose. I’m a grown man now, and have been for a number of decades, and I understand that a grown man should overcome these kinds of fears. Call it what you want. Paranoia. Post-Traumatic Stress. Hypervigilance. Faggotry – for me there’s always a circle my arm’s length around me, and if anybody breaks into that circle, the searchlight goes on and the sirens go off.
Propinquity.
You’d think that somebody with an arm’s-length rule wouldn’t move to New York City. The truth is I didn’t think about it. I wouldn’t let myself. What I mean is I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
THERE’S THIS THING I do: I call it Big Ben and Little Ben. Big Ben is the Big Voice, the authority. He makes the decisions. You don’t brook Big Ben’s dicta. He’s the man and what he says goes.
Big Ben decided to leave my wife. Big Ben decided to leave Idaho. Big Ben decided he was going to have sex with men. The problem with Big Ben is he doesn’t stick around for very long. He just drops in, pronounces how things are going to be, then he’s off.
Little Ben is who’s got to carry out the instructions. He’s the guy who’s got to do it. Little Ben is mostly who I’m stuck with.
Little Ben had to sit down with my wife in our beautiful three-bedroom home in Boise, Idaho, and tell her I didn’t want to live my life with her anymore. Little Ben had to pack his shit into his used Datsun pickup and drive across the United States alone.
Little Ben had to figure out how I’m going to touch another man, when I can’t even let another human being closer than an arm away.
Little Ben had to figure out how to live in a city that is a constant assault on my propinquity.
The way these three first converged – Big Ben and Little Ben and Little Ben’s arm-away rule – all came together that first morning in September when I had to get on the subway to get to Columbia University. Sober.
It was late morning and I was the only guy on the bright platform. The Number One was a huge monster screaming out of darkness. It came to a stop. The doors opened and a couple people got off. Inside, there was a space, just barely, for one normal human being without propinquity problems to stand. I went to get on but couldn’t move. A short Latina woman in a red scarf and gold bling looked out at me. The way she looked at me, she knew. The subway car did that subway car pushing-out-air sound and the two-toned bell ding-donged and the doors started to close. Fucking Big Ben, man.
Little Ben jumped on. The subway car lurched ahead and from all sides the arm-away rule went bust. Crushed into me were four or five people. My chest was smashed into a tall black guy’s bare arm – my eyes only inches from his smallpox vaccination, somebody’s suitcase was poking me in the ass, a Chinese schoolgirl with earphones on was so close I could hear the Madonna song, and the white guy in a suit was wearing Polo. Little Ben was about to pass out. My lungs were pumping overtime trying to find air. A heartbeat off the charts. I found my feet, tried to stand them square. My hand was at the silver pole and I wrapped my hand around it tight.
With each station, more people got on, then some got off, then more got on. By the time we got to 116th, I was still alive.
I may cuss him a lot, but without Big Ben I’d still be baling hay for my old man.
And by the way, yes. Little Ben’s the one with the limp dick.
Big Ben says enough of this shit – all this ancient Icky Familial Catholic my mother my sister sex shame guilt. Little Ben agrees. Believe me he’s trying.
SO I’M WALKING down East Fifth Street between Third Avenue and Second on a hot summer night in 1985 to Le Culot. One of the two men in my life who I could say truly loved me, Hank Christian, is walking next to me. The old Sinclair Station on Fifth and Bowery is behind us. Behind us too are the garbage cans in front of my building. We’re just passing where Fish Bar’s going to be, about to the corner of Second Avenue and the Greek diner where I always ordered a turkey sandwich on Thanksgiving. Hank’s wearing a white T-shirt and cutoff jeans, white socks and white tennis shoes. There’s something just-showered about him, even though he’s been on the subway. His long hair is a charcoal color. That Roman nose. His black eyes.
THERE IS SOMETHING going on. What my arm-away rule is telling me was that something’s up with this Hank Christian guy. Something about the way Hank’s body is moving. I can’t tell exactly what it is. I mean it isn’t like Shit Sandwich Bill, a guy I dated once. Shit Sandwich Bill walked ahead a step, sometimes two, the shoulder closest to me hunched up, like I was the AIDS virus and we were in a dead heat to get the rubber on right. Who knows who was more afraid, him or me. During dinner one night, I took the chance and tried to explain to Bill about the arm-away rule, how it goes from propinquity to intimacy. I thought maybe this guy would understand. But he wouldn’t have any of it.
“What do you mean afraid?” he said, “What’s there to be afraid of?”
The reason I call him Shit Sandwich Bill is because two weeks later when I asked him why he hadn’t called, he said, “When you know the sandwich is a shit sandwich, you don’t have to taste it.”
I hate to date.
Then there’s Mark. When I walked down the street with him, it was like I didn’t exist. He’s a compact guy and darted around. He’d constantly turn and step right in front of me. As if I wasn’t even there. I kept telling him to stop it. To be more considerate of me. But he never listened. So I told him the next time he stepped in front of me like that, I was going to trip him. Which I did. One day, Mark was laying in the gutter.
But with Hank Christian, walking down East Fifth Street that first Friday night, something about his body and what it was doing was tripping me out. Usually I can tell you in detail everything that’s going on within the sweep of my arm. But with Hank I couldn’t figure.
Later on that night, though – it was after Le Culot and we’d gone across the street to Night Birds – just as we’re leaving Night Birds – was when things started to happen.
WE’VE JUST PAID the bill and I get to the door first. I open the door and hold it open for Hank. What Hank does next he does without thinking. He reaches his hand behind me and tries to get to the door so he can hold the door open for me.
It all starts to make sense. Earlier that evening as Hank and I’d walked down East Fifth Street to Le Culot, whenever the sidewalk got too narrow between the buildings and the garbage cans, Hank always stepped back and let me walk ahead. At first I thought Hank was being polite. By the end of the block, I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t argue, though, I just walked ahead because when it comes to two guys relating to one another on shit like this I’m fucking lost. But at Night Birds, when he won’t let me hold the door for him, when his arm goes behind and grabs for the door, suddenly there isn’t a force in the world strong enough to move me.
“No, you go,” I say.
“No, you go,” Hank says.
Hank and I could have been there all evening letting the air conditioning go out into the sweltering night. Of course, Guardian of the Doorway Hank, plus being the Capricorn goat that he is, is also determined. We stand there for some ridiculous amount of time arguing back and forth.
“No, you go.”
“No, you go.”
Then in a moment, I see something go off in Hank’s black eyes. As soon as that happens, Hank steps out in front and lets me hold the door.
We’d walked maybe half a block when I ask:
“You all right?”
It takes several steps for Hank to answer.
“I’ve been doing that my whole life,” Hank says. �
�You’re the first person to call me on it.”
“On what?” I say.
“It’s always my fault if something goes wrong.”
“Something could go wrong with the door?” I ask.
“No,” Hank says. Then: “Yes, I mean it’s up to me that everything goes smoothly.”
“Wow,” I say. “My head had a totally different story going on.”
“What’s that?”
“I thought you were treating me like the girl,” I say.
THAT STARTED THE conversation Hank Christian and I never stopped having. Until, that is, the got to go pal letter and we quit speaking.
The fact that the same event happened to both of us at the same time and what Hank saw was so different from what I saw makes us both a little crazy. We are immediately right on it, trying to figure out how the other came up with what he came up with.
“I don’t get it,” Hank says.
“Straight guys don’t get it,” I say. “How ingrained they are with how they treat the other sex.”
“But you’re not the other sex.”
“I’m one of them.”
“You think that by being polite I’m treating you like a girl?” Hank says.
“Probably my own shit,” I say. “But just for conversation let’s say yes. Would you fight over who held the door with another straight guy? How do you guys figure out who goes through the door first?”
“You guys? Who’s you guys?”
“Straight guys.”
“Fuck if I know. It just happens.”
“Do you take turns?”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“And what about you?” I say. “It’s my fault if something goes wrong – something I’ve been doing my whole life – what’s that about?”
“It’s just a fucking door.” Hank says.
“We don’t live on things,” I say. “We live on the meaning of things.”
“You’re quoting.” Hank says, “Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince.”
“Well, what does that door mean to you? Why were you fighting to be the one who opened it? If you give up control then the world is going to fall apart?”
“You were fighting too!”
“I had the door,” I say, “You were trying to move me.”
THAT’S HOW THE whole night went, Hank and me. We started out on Second Avenue, past Love Saves The Day, Café 113, Optimo Cigars, Moishe’s Home Made Kosher, B&H Dairy, Block Drugs. When we walked past Gem Spa, Hank said, what the fuck are egg creams?
That night, we must have walked back and forth on every street from Tenth to Houston, between Third Avenue and Avenue C, talking. Actually, it was me who did the talking. Part of it was nerves. Afraid if I didn’t start talking, I never would. Part of it was Hank. I mean let’s face it. I was totally crushed out on the guy. But it was more than seduction. In seduction, there’s an intent, even if it’s subtle. Not an iota of intent from me. In fact, I kept trying to find myself, where I started and Hank ended. There was a space, an actual place in the world that night that existed only because Hank and I existed. Stoned, mushrooms stoned, or even hashish without the paranoia. Like that. But we were sober. We were inside something in a space. Under a miracle umbrella. And we were talking – I mean I was talking, and we were side by side, walking back and forth up and down through the Lower East Side, at first Hank just a question now and then, but the way his black eyes watched, the way he turned his head, moved his ear close to listen, you could tell. Something was going on. And it wasn’t just me. The way Hank described it, it was like he’d finally met his real father and his real father was me. Or we were kids playing a game the way kids out of nothing can make a whole day out of cowboys and Indians come real.
No matter how hard you try, there’s no way you can make up a world like that on your own. That space, the way you get lost in it, the way you feel, takes two.
The dark heat of the night, the six-story walkups, every window open. On the stoops, jug bottles of wine, beer bottles, bottles of rum, Cokes, tubs of melting ice. People talking fast Spanish. On top of the street smell – exhaust and garbage, sweaty bodies – the thick smell of marihoochi.
Talking: how it used to feel walking next to my father. Then my mother, my sister, paper dolls, dress up. There was no getting away from them. How they fought with each other over who could pop my zits. The enemas my mother gave me – even my shit wasn’t mine.
The Catholic Church. The Holy Cross nuns. Fucking Catholicism, man. What does it take to get excommunicated?
The narrow streets crowded with cars, honking taxis, loud boomboxes: Michael Jackson, Hector Lavoe, Phil Collins, Lionel Richie, Kool and the Gang. Garbage cans stacked next to scrawny trees with little cast iron fences around them.
Talking: when I was five I posed with my father’s fishing pole for my sister’s Brownie Instamatic. I wanted there to be concrete proof in the world that I was a boy and that my father had acknowledged I was a boy, because you see, this is his fishing pole and its over my shoulder even though he never used it.
Lumpy broken pieces of sidewalk. Piles of dog shit. Puke. You had to watch where you walked. Sidewalks so narrow only single file could walk. Now Hank was always walking through first.
We were on First Street, right where the first Dixon Place was going to be. Coming up just ahead of us was another narrow spot in the sidewalk. Hank went to step up first, but I cut in quick and stepped ahead.
“Oh no you don’t!” Hank said.
Hank grabbed for my shoulder but missed.
“You’ll think I’m treating you like a girl!”
“You don’t always get to decide,” I said. “You’ve spent your whole life doing it. Who made you the Grand Chooser?”
“Fuck you!”
“No, fuck you.”
Deep into it. Two grown-up men pushing at each other, trying to be the one to go first. And the most amazing thing. A man is touching me and there’s no searchlight going on, no sirens blaring. Hank and I are walking, I mean it’s some kind of walking. More like wrestling-walking. Or dancing. My shoulder hard against Hank’s. Then we roll, back against back – he almost knocks me over – neither one of us letting up, my arm pushing with everything in me against Hank’s arm, then another roll and Hank and I are chest to chest. Somewhere in there we start laughing. Then a tiny moment that went by way too fast when I understand how necessary it is for men to smash and punch and wrestle and hit.
The later the night got, the more it’s humid. So fucking hot. I’m out of breath, sweat running the insides of my arms. Hank’s sweating, too.
“I’ll buy you a soda,” Hank says.
On Second Avenue, we walk into Schacht’s Delicatessen. It’s an hallucination. Bright fluorescence. The smell of old wood, weird cheese, and chicken soup. Hum of refrigeration. At the back aisle cooler, Hank opens the cooler door and all that cold air comes rushing out. Hank swings the door back and forth making a breeze. Christ what a relief. I lean my back against the cool glass. Hank lifts up his T-shirt and pushes his hard smooth belly inside the cooler door.
Then from inside the cooler, some guy yells: “This ain’t Christmas!”
Hank jumps back, then ducks, looks inside, trying to see who’s in there.
“Sorry,” Hank says. “”Just trying to keep cool.”
“Close the fucking door, asshole!”
Young boys. I’d say Hank and I are about ten. Hank gets a celery soda and I get a root beer.
Behind the counter at Schacht’s, all you could see of the tiny woman is her head and neck. Straight gray hair parted in the middle curling up just above the brown leather of her shoulders. Crossed in front of her, on the slick wood countertop, her Florida-tanned Bingo arms. Hank’s fiddling with his wallet, I’m trying to count change. Both of us about to bust a gut. As her hand, the crooked fingers, give Hank back his change, the woman tilts her head back, rolls her eyes, and hollers to the guy at the back in the cooler.
“You
old fucking goat! Don’t talk that way to our customer people!”
She gives Hank and me a big smile and winks, pushes her head over her arms and leans in to us. You can see where the false teeth fit her gums.
“You boys stay out of trouble tonight,” she says. “Enjoy your sodas.”
It’s a miracle night all right, and the miracle is taking in the whole world. Skinny calico cats under the stoops, one fat yellow cat in the window on Sixth – that whole street between Second and A smelling of curry and masala. Dogs barking, a schnauzer on Ninth, Rin Tin Tin on C, a Doberman on Eighth and Second, the Toy Poodle that looks pink at the end of a leash of the huge hairy man just in boxer shorts, no jock strap, both Hank and I cross the street to avoid.
Just up from the Pyramid, the usual crowd of skinheads across from Dog Shit Park on A. Weekends, on the corner of Eighth Street is where they hang out. I should have steered us clear of that corner, but I’ve been too busy talking to Hank. Before we know it, we’re in the middle of them. Loud scream-kill punk music blaring out of that bar. Really – the music is so loud the people in there aren’t ever going to hear past forty. The skinheads are all in their Friday night finery – black leather, silver chains, spiked-out mohawks. Walking through the crowd of them – there must have been twenty or more – is like walking through a dense black leather forest with colorful windmills on top. But don’t get me wrong, these guys aren’t pretty. Sid was vicious. And we have to watch our step – they’re all high – crack high, blasted.
Hank and I keep our heads down, keep up our pace. We must have walked a half a block when this one guy in a red, white, and blue-striped Mohawk comes up to Hank and me. His hair is sticking up tall as his arm.
“Spare a dollar, man?”
Hank doesn’t look at him, keeps walking. I have to step around the guy. When we are a couple storefronts out of there, the red, white, and blue mohawk dude says, “You fags are all Republicans.”
Surprised we hear him. But we do. Both Hank and I stop. Both of us turn. Both of us want to kill the skinny little fucker.
I Loved You More Page 4