Scott is not waiting for him in the corridor. Robin checks the bathrooms and the stairwells, verging on panic. He locates him at last in the parking lot, tearing his way down a row of cars by leaping furiously from one hood to the next. He could be an escaped inmate, arms flapping like busted wings, face irate, his landings heavy and clumsy. Robin takes off after him, calling for him to stop. He watches as Scott jumps off the last car and bounds to a chain link fence at the perimeter, curling his fingers through the crisscrossed steel and lashing against it with all his strength. Through the hiss of parkway traffic Robin can hear Scott howling like an abandoned dog. When Robin gets to his side, he slides to the ground, suddenly out of breath, lifeless.
Cautiously, not sure the gesture won’t be rejected, he puts his hand on top of Scott’s. “I’m sorry about your mom.”
“I’m sorry I don’t have a grenade to lob into that asshole’s office.”
“Maybe you need a lawyer.”
“I need another fucking life,” Scott spits back.
Robin bites his lower lip to keep it from quivering. “Six months isn’t that long, really.”
“Easy for you to say.” Scott pulls his hand out from Robin’s grip and turns away from him.
At the other end of the lot, a security car swerves toward them. Robin hops to his feet and grabs Scott’s jacket in his fist. “Come on. The cops are coming.”
Scott snaps into alertness and takes off running, so fast Robin is left behind still thinking about it. The security car moves toward him. He forces his legs to move, chasing Scott across the lot, through rows of cars, past a bank of shuttle vans marked with the hospital seal. Shielded from view, they scramble behind a dumpster and along a wall to the rear of the building. A concrete ramp slants up to the loading dock. Out of sight of the parking lot, they stop to catch their breath, leaning their palms on their knees. Their eyes dart from where they have just been to where they must still move, coming to rest for a moment upon each other. Robin hacks up a sour gob from the back of his throat, spits forcefully. They watch it splat, a slimy green daisy on the asphalt. “Fucking cigarettes,” Robin says.
“You’re getting tough, man.”
Robin looks away from Scott’s eyes, which are telegraphing too much strange admiration for him to understand. “Am not.” He bites his lip to fight a nervous smile. At his feet is a Burger King bag, crumpled and stuffed. He scoops it up and pulls out a half-eaten burger and a half-filled strawberry shake. “Hey, look,” he says to Scott. “Leftovers.”
Scott grabs the burger and pitches it at the hospital, as if this is the grenade he had fantasized about. It peels apart in midair and sails into a pane of glass; the meat sticks to the surface for a few seconds and leaves behind a red-and-green condiment smear. Just then the security car rolls into view.
Robin runs a few feet forward and hurls the milkshake forcefully, forgetting for the moment all the times he’s been told he throws like a girl. It sails high and far, spraying pink liquid and landing with a satisfying splat on the hood of the car. Scott calls out his name and cheers, then takes off running again, past the rear parking gate, through a humming industrial lot and out to the road. Robin follows, so unexpectedly happy that his legs no longer feel any strain at all.
They are crouching at the edge of the Garden State Parkway under the big green sign for exit 165. Traffic is continuous, with few breaks. On the other side, across eight lanes and a grassy divider, is a pulloff, where a handful of people are waiting at a bus shelter. Robin has made a decision for them both: they’re getting on the next Red and Tan bus that pulls up. If his calculations are right, that should be in about five minutes, and the sign above the driver’s window should read: Port Authority Bus Terminal, New York City.
A deep voice shouts from the top of the embankment slope. Two security guards glare down at them.
“Come on,” Scott says. He leaps up and onto the highway. The first two lanes are clear and he waits at the edge of a third for a car to pass. Its horn blasts in alarm as it whizzes by. When he reaches the fourth lane a screech of brakes cuts through the air and another horn sounds. Scott collapses on the grassy divider. Robin feels his mouth go dry.
The guards are yelling behind him. There is no time to waste. He runs into one lane . . . more brakes . . . voices yelling . . . another lane, the third . . . more squealing tires. He gasps for air as his feet land on the grass. Now they just have to do it again.
Thirty minutes later Robin is cursing his impulsiveness. The skyline has just come into view over the Meadowlands—his favorite part of the trip, the point in the journey where his heart begins to beat faster and his body tenses in anticipation of the city—but Scott is asleep next to him. Or perhaps just pretending to sleep; Robin isn’t sure. Ten minutes ago Scott told him to shut up and then leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Robin had apparently been talking too much. Scott knows so little about the city, Robin had realized, and he was compelled to give him some pointers: don’t gawk at people who look strange to you, or you’ll wind up looking like the real outsider. Don’t stop and talk to guys mumbling in your direction in the park—they’re trying to sell you hard drugs. You need exact change to take a city bus; the driver won’t break a bill for you. He wanted to take Scott to a museum but Scott wasn’t interested. He was just outlining the best way to hail a cab when Scott cut him off. “Stop acting like a fucking know-it-all, man.” Now he’s feeling foolish. How could Scott understand what it meant to him to go to New York? Worse than that, he realizes with a weighty clarity, he has once again blatantly disobeyed his parents, this time beyond any rationalization or apology, and now, as the bus approaches the tunnel, there is literally no turning back.
The Port Authority Bus Terminal sprawls across four square blocks in the center of Manhattan. From the street it is nearly impossible to get a complete view of the structure. Its tunnels and overhead walkways give the illusion that it continues into everything around it, a cocoon at the center of a spiderweb. North on Eighth Avenue and west on Forty-Second Street, signs in red and yellow and blue and black advertise only sex and fast food. Even in daylight, lights flash and neon hums.
Descending down a narrow escalator from the bus gate, Robin watches Scott looking around in quiet awe. People crowd every corridor, even in the middle of the day. Scott buys an Orange Julius and a pretzel. Robin spends five dollars on a knit hat emblazoned with a New York Yankees logo like the one on Scott’s baseball cap. He had hoped to buy a jacket or sweatshirt but he only had a ten dollar bill on him. Scott announces that he has to pee.
“Me, too,” Robin says, beginning to feel the pain of holding it in for so long. “Just wait and we’ll go to a restaurant.”
“Why?”
“The bathrooms here are scary.”
“Mr. Big Shot City Boy is afraid to take a piss?”
“Fine. ”
The doorway to the men’s room is like the mouth of an open ammonia bottle. A slightly stooped worker arcs a long mop back and forth, glazing the mustard yellow tiles in his path. A black man in filthy clothing has flipped up one of the dryer nozzles on the wall and wobbles drunkenly within the warm blast, the bottoms of his pants soaking up the floor. Scott pinches his nose, talks in an exaggerated muffle. “It smells April fresh in here.” He unzips his fly at a urinal.
Robin stands at the one next to him and looks down at a well of stinky piss around an eroding green deodorant disk.
“What does the sign say in a Polish bathroom?” Scott asks. “Don’t eat the mints. ”
“My grandmother is Polish, asshole.” Robin flushes the silver arm and water gushes down with such force it sprays back at him. He jumps away, just barely avoiding getting doused. Scott laughs as he watches the fizz rise.
Robin moves down to the next one, also not yet cleaned. He breathes through his mouth.
The door swings open. A man in a suit steps up to the broken urinal between them, resting his briefcase next to Robin’s ankle. Robin checks out his
profile: skin rough from ancient acne, hair styled and wavy, wide neck pushing out of his starched collar. The guy looks at Robin, his chin almost touching the shoulder pad of his blue blazer. Robin turns away from the penetrating gaze, stares down at the urinal; when he looks up again the guy is still staring, his eyes commanding, his neck tense. He is shaking his arm as if trying to get every last drop out of his dick. Even though his bladder is full, Robin can’t make himself pee; he flushes and zips up, wishing he hadn’t let Scott bring them in here.
At the sink, cold water on his face breaks the spell of the ammonia fumes and the intensity of the man’s eyes. He swishes water in his mouth, spits out tiny flecks of food dislodged from his teeth, hacks up a glob of tobacco-stained mucus. He wants to wipe his armpits, looks around for paper towels but finds only blow dryers attached to the walls. The custodian’s mop is almost licking at his heels, the vapors intensifying.
In the mirror he sees the suit has fixed his gaze on Scott; his arm is still pumping. Scott is looking back at this guy, at this guy’s face and down into his crotch. The man steps back a couple of inches, revealing his fist sliding to and fro along a stiff pink penis. Robin’s eyes widen. What does this guy want? Is he going to do something to Scott? Scott is shaking his own dick, but not very hard—still, he doesn’t move away. Why is Scott staying there? A queasiness seeps through Robin’s gut as he watches Scott watch this guy beat off. The way the guy towers over Scott, his buttocks clenched inside his creased pants, his dick visible in glimpses between his fingers—it’s creepy but Robin finds himself captivated. His own cock is cramped in the folds of his underwear, threatening to get hard.
The dryer quiets suddenly. A tiny gasp rises from the guy at the urinal and fades into the easy-listening music. He’s getting carried away—on top of everything else, Robin thinks, there’s something ridiculous about this. Robin doesn’t know if he’s mad or upset or excited that Scott hasn’t moved away—maybe a little of all three—but then Scott turns and catches his eye in the mirror. His mouth is twisted in a smile as if he might bust out laughing and his eyes are bright with mischief—it dawns on Robin that Scott’s hatching a plan.
The bum in the dirty clothes smacks the blow dryer and it begins its mechanical hum again.
The man in the suit is jerking faster on himself, his face red with pressure, his eyes squeezed tight. Scott carefully zips up his fly and then pauses, shifting his stance as if ready to pounce. The suit is on a runaway train, his body freezing, his hips thrusting forward, his breath groaning out of him, getting louder. At the very moment he hits his peak with a guttural grunt, Scott reaches across and slams the flusher. The rush of water cascades down and splashes back up into the guy’s crotch, on his hand and dick and the fabric of his pants. Scott is already running out of the bathroom, whooping in delight. Robin gets one last look in the mirror—the man has stepped back, his ecstasy dissolving into confusion, then anger. “What the hell?” he shouts, looking down at his soaked trousers. Robin gets a last look at the guy’s swollen dick—already deflating from the shock—and then he takes off, too, past the custodian, who looks up without much interest, and out the swinging doors. The air in the corridor is cool and clean.
He spots Scott down the hall, waving him on. “That was excellent, ” Scott is yelling.
“You’re an asshole,” Robin yells back. “You’ll get us both in trouble.” He gets to Scott’s side and punches him in the arm.
Scott pushes him away, annoyed. “Yeah, right. Like some queer jerking the turkey is gonna have us arrested.”
“You’re not in New Jersey now. The rules are different here.” He looks back over his shoulder, but the suit has yet to emerge from the bathroom. Still, he feels anxious and wants to move on. He’s suddenly aware of the bustle of people all around them, the beehive of activity. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Oh, come on, Robin. Lighten up. It was funny.”
“I didn’t know what you were doing!” Robin shouts.
“What, did you think I was really gonna whack off with that guy?”
Scott says this in a way that sinks Robin into shame. He tries to explain. “From where I was standing, you just looked like you were into it.”
Scott sticks his finger down his throat. “Right, like that asshole was some big turn-on.”
“How would I know what turns you on?” Robin spits out and dashes off toward the Eighth Avenue subway, pushing through the crowd fast enough to leave Scott behind. He positions himself behind the big newsstand near the subway entrance, watching as Scott spins around, trying to locate him in the rush of people. Robin savors the moment—Scott disoriented, helpless. Who’s in charge now? When he’s satisfied that he’s gained the upper hand, he calls Scott’s name, ready for an argument.
Scott runs to his side, his voice contrite. “I didn’t mean to freak you out,” he says. “Don’t be mad.”
Robin takes Scott to Washington Square Park and points through the arch to a building he and his mother have spun many stories about: One Fifth Avenue. “That’s where I’m going to live one day.”
Scott laughs. “In your dreams.”
“What do you know about any of it?”
Scott holds out his hands in a sign of surrender. “OK, OK, sorry. You’re really Mr. Touchy today—you know that?”
“I just wish you’d give me a break every once in a while.”
They plant themselves on a park bench to people-watch. A woman and her teenage son catch Robin’s eye. The boy is about their age, his hair slicked back, his neck wrapped in a scratchy-looking scarf, his coat and pants stiff, almost dandified. He carries a clarinet case.
“Check out the band fag,” Scott says.
Robin and the boy lock eyes; the boy looks away and then back. His mother is talking animatedly and doesn’t notice her son isn’t paying attention. Robin sees a curiosity, a longing, in the boy’s eyes that he knows reflects from his own stare. He wonders what that boy and his mother talk about. He imagines the boy saying to her, “Who is that guy and what is he up to?” What kind of story would they make up about him? About him and Scott?
Since leaving behind the antic pace of the Port Authority, Scott has eased into the city just fine, is even becoming adventurous. Scott wanders around the park on his own for a few minutes. When he returns, he asks Robin to give him a dollar and follow him. Robin watches fearfully, heart pounding, as Scott buys a joint off of a scary guy with wild eyes and ashy skin who had approached them muttering, “Sense, sense.”
Scott drags him to a set of steps leading down to a basement apartment and lights up. They smoke in quick puffs, passing the joint back and forth to each other as if afraid to hold on to it too long. “Keep a look out for the fuzz,” Scott tells him.
Flying, floaty, warming up in the afternoon sun. The park shifts into a glazed newness for Robin; it’s a fairground, a picture book, a board game. Candyland. Scott walks to the large circular fountain in the center of the park—the water’s never on anymore, Robin realizes—and hops up on the fountain’s outer wall, scissoring his arms as he walks, trying to keep balanced. Robin hangs back on his bench, studying him. The moment stretches, brightens, removes itself from time: Scott on display, Robin watching, his tangle of feelings for Scott loosening, unfolding, softening. Scott. He whispers, Hey, Scott. Hey, I really like you. This is so cool, being here with you. I wish you would really let me do stuff with you. He thinks about how he wants to really taste Scott’s skin. He wants to kiss him for a long time and stick his nose in his armpit and really smell him and hold one of his butt cheeks in each of his hands. He grins at the picture: kissing Scott with his hands on his butt. Thoughts tumble forth, each new idea pushing out the next as if he’s opened up an overstuffed cupboard and the contents are showering down.
Scott looks over and smiles, coptering his arms as he wobbles on the ledge. When he rights himself at last, his face goofs up at Robin. Robin waves back. The distance between them becomes clear again. He reminds himsel
f, Scott has no idea what I’m thinking, and he’s not standing there thinking the same thing. How could I ever say what I want to say to him?
They wander aimlessly, first south and then west and then north and west again. Past Sixth Avenue the city’s orderly grid unravels. Fourth Street and Tenth Street meet at an intersection; Bleecker actually crosses itself. On Christopher, there are more gay guys than he’s ever seen before. His mother has never taken him this deep into the Village. It’s as though they’ve wandered into an outrageous homosexual labyrinth: men on the corner, men sitting on stoops, men laughing in doorways of stores. Leather pants bulging at the crotch, bushy mustaches, flannel shirts with the sleeves cut off, even in this cold weather. Disco music trumpets from a window above: You make me feel mighty real. He catches snippets of conversation where “Mary” and “Louise” and “honey” and “sister” fly between men who look too mean and masculine to be talking that way. Some of the men are sexy—one of them looks like Mr. Cortez, with dark curly hair and tight polyester dress pants—but most of them seem dangerous, alien. Scott is quieter than he’s been all day; Robin can tell he’s checking out the scene. He’ll watch a particular character walk by, then chuckle or mutter something inaudible, and then move on without a word to Robin.
They stop when they can go no farther, at the edge of the Hudson, looking out onto New Jersey: drab, industrial, impersonal, the waterfront landscape a buffer between the tidy suburbs beyond it and this strange corner of the city. If you measured it, yard by yard, it wouldn’t be so far away—which is the strangest thing of all because he feels like he’s traveled an odyssey to get here. How many hours have passed? Neither he nor Scott has a watch, and the piers don’t offer a time and temperature display like on the bank in the center of Greenlawn. His head spins just thinking about what awaits him when he gets home, and yet he can’t bring himself to go back, to smash the glass around this day in the city with Scott.
The World of Normal Boys Page 27