Quarantine

by Rahul Mehta

That was before Don was my boyfriend.

  Don wasn’t a prostitute. He was Antwon’s friend. He was also his former student: “Structured Improvisation,” at a summer dance festival a few years earlier. Don was still in college then. Now he was in New York, trying to make his way in the dance world.

  Antwon knew Don needed money. Don knew Antwon wanted him.

  Antwon was almost twice his age. (Not that he needed to pay for sex: he had a dancer’s body.)

  Even after Don and I met and moved in together—a one-bedroom in Crown Heights overrun by cockroaches we named after conservative politicians—Don continued to see Antwon once every couple of weeks. They sat at a back table at Kiev, and Antwon ate pierogies and Don, borscht. Or they met on a Monday night at Marion’s and drank cosmopolitans.

  I knew what they ate, what they drank, because these were answers to questions I allowed myself to ask.

  One of Antwon’s short stories about paying men for sex is anthologized in a collection of gay erotica I discovered on my bookshelf shortly after Don and I moved in together. I found the book on a shelf I had designated for Don. We segregated our books on my insistence. I told him that, as a writer, I needed to be able to locate my books with ease. Don was suspicious; he detected no order—not alphabetical, not even thematic. The truth was, I didn’t trust the relationship. It was all so new. I was already imagining the night we split up, the following days: looking for new apartments, untangling our lives. I remembered the scene in St. Elmo’s Fire after Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson have broken up. For me it was the saddest part of the movie. They are sorting through records, unable to remember which belongs to whom, fighting over an artist they both love. As a concession, Judd Nelson says, “You can have all the Carly Simon,” sneering at the singer’s name. In our case, Don and I would fight over the Carver; Don would say to me, “You can have all the Anne Tyler.”

  In Antwon’s short story, the narrator asks of the young man something simple, but specific. He wants to enter him from behind, something the young man has never allowed anyone to do. In the story, the young man is hesitant, and he takes a few days to think about it. When he finally agrees, saying, “I need the money,” Antwon’s narrator isn’t surprised by the rationale (after all, he’s heard the young man express his need for money on many occasions). However, Antwon’s narrator can’t help pointing out the irony, the obvious falseness, of “this white boy” (those are the narrator’s words), a recent graduate of an Ivy League school which he attended as a fourth-generation legacy, selling his body because he “needs the money.” “Surely,” Antwon’s narrator notes, “need means something different to him than to me.”

  I was lying on the floor in the apartment, still reading An-twon’s story, when Don came home.

  “It’s not about me,” he said, without my asking.

  Several months earlier, when Don and I were drunk—slumped on the cheap leather couch at the Boiler Room, The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?” on the jukebox, the white stuffing from the ripped couch glowing in the black light along with the white of Don’s eyes, into which I was looking—I had asked Don, “Who is Antwon?” and Don told me about Antwon’s project paying men for sex. I knew this short story in this anthology was an account of Don’s participation. The hair color might be different, the eyes, the name, but I could recognize Don in a story. There are things only a lover knows.

  “It isn’t me,” Don said again. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Rudy Giuliani skittering under the dresser.

  I was still holding the book, and I pointed to the dedication in italics just below the title: To Don, for Inspiration.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  2.

  One night, about a year after I found the book, Don said to me, “Antwon asked me to ask you if you want to participate in a reading he’s curating.” Don told me the name of the reading series, which was prestigious and which I myself had attended many times. I was flattered but unsure.

  “He’s never read my work. He doesn’t know anything about me.”

  “Antwon is lazy. He’s probably filling the program with friends.”

  “I’m not a friend,” I said.

  I told Don to tell Antwon I’d think about it.

  A week later, Don came home from drinks with Antwon (Temple Bar: martinis) and handed me a stack of cards with a note: Please distribute. The card announced the reading, and it listed my name along with three others’.

  “I never said I’d do it.”

  “You’re stuck now.”

  I thought: Antwon has a way of getting what he wants.

  I only had one story that seemed polished enough to read. It was called “The Night Jagdish Learned to Drive.” In it, the sixteen-year-old narrator, Jagdish, is woken by his mother late at night. She tells him her father—his grandfather—is gravely ill, and they are all driving from West Virginia to Chicago in a matter of hours, and she is hopping on the first flight she can get to Bombay. She hands him a list, and asks him to drive to the twenty-four-hour supermarket to buy what she’ll need: toilet paper, deodorant, tampons. She either forgets or chooses to ignore the fact that Jagdish has only a learner’s permit and is not allowed to drive at night, not even accompanied by an adult and certainly not alone. While at the store, he buys, in addition to the items his mother has requested, a porn magazine. He pulls to the back of the parking lot and, under the dim lamps, studies the pages, focusing on a pictorial story of a couple named Rocco and Lacey. It’s Lacey’s birthday, and she’s at a bar all alone. At closing time, Rocco, the bartender, tends to her birthday needs. Jagdish tucks the magazine away. But later that night, while he and his parents are driving to Chicago, Jagdish finds himself replaying the images from the magazine. He remembers Rocco in particular, and Jagdish furtively masturbates in the backseat, while his parents are in the front, his father driving. The next morning, not long after daybreak, Jagdish’s father tells him he is exhausted. Jagdish takes over, and the story ends with an image of him at the wheel.

  Later, in a writing workshop, a classmate would rip apart the story—“Isn’t ‘driving’ too obvious a metaphor for Jagdish’s sexual awakening? Didn’t someone else just publish a story using the same metaphor?”—and I’d find myself agreeing with her. But for now I was proud of the story.

  I sent a copy to Antwon: Thought you might want to see this. Would love your feedback.

  Several days later, Antwon called. “Sure,” he said, “let’s talk about it. How about meeting at my office?” He gave me an address. It was only when I arrived that I realized it was for an Italian pastry shop in the East Village. I stopped at the counter and bought a plate of cookies and a cappuccino before proceeding to the back, where Antwon was sitting at a corner table.

  “Nice office,” I said. “It’s better than mine. I work in publishing—did Don tell you? My desk is shoved into a tiny cubicle. But my boss calls it an ‘office,’ not a ‘cube,’ because she wants me to feel important. She has a real office, with a framed Hannah Hoch poster above her desk. When she wants something from me, she knocks on the flimsy partitioning and asks, ‘Can I come in your office?’ It all feels so silly.”

  “Come in my office,” Antwon said, and pulled out a chair.

  I had come straight from work, and I felt self-conscious about my outfit—khakis and an oxford shirt with a button-down collar—which must have seemed preppy to Antwon. He was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans and heavy, black-rimmed glasses I didn’t recognize from the two or three times I had met him out at bars. On the table in front of him was an espresso, a copy of my story (pristine: no dog-eared pages, no marks, at least none that I could see), and a legal pad flipped open to an empty page, a fancy pen resting diagonally across it.

  I asked him if he had read the story. He grunted yes. I expected him to elaborate, but he didn’t. I was still new to writing and insecure about my work. I wanted to ask him if he liked the story, but I didn’t want to sound needy. I didn’t want to admit to Antwon there was an
ything I needed from him. I finally asked, “Any suggestions?”

  Antwon thought for several seconds then said, “Not really. I’m not the best person to ask. I’m not good at giving feedback.”

  We nibbled at the cookies. They were so pretty, I had bought them forgetting I didn’t like that kind. I asked Antwon questions about the reading series, the venue, the other readers. We didn’t talk about my story.

  Just before it was time for me to leave, I again tried to muster courage to ask if he liked my story. But I asked instead, “What do you think of the sex scenes?” I thought: This you can comment on. Isn’t it your specialty?

  He asked, “Which specifically? The description of the photos in the porn mag or the masturbation scene in the car?”

  “Either. Both.”

  He scanned a few pages, thought for a moment. “Is the word ‘rare’ really necessary?” It took me a minute to realize he was referring to my description of drops of Rocco’s come on Lacey’s breasts as “rare pearls.” He said, “Aren’t pearls ‘rare’ by definition?”

  “I’m not sure I’m looking for line edits here. I’m wondering more about the thrust of it.” I blushed at the pun.

  Antwon removed his glasses, lifted his gaze to the ceiling, clasped his hands behind his head. “I was interested in how boring the sex scenes were.” He chuckled and said, “That’s nothing against your piece. Honestly. I think it’s true of all sex scenes. They’re always boring. What words do we have to describe sex? The terms are either clinical and sterile or they are childish and comical. It’s impossible to get sex right.”

  “What about your own sex scenes?” I asked. “Are they boring?”

  “That’s not for me to say. It’s for others to judge.” After a moment, he said, “You, for instance. Do you find my sex scenes boring?”

  “I’ve never read your work.”

  I couldn’t tell if he knew I was lying.

  I pushed the plate of cookies toward him. “I don’t like these,” I said. “I don’t like anise.”

  As I was leaving, I turned around and saw Antwon biting into one.

  The reading, when it rolled around, was fine. I was nervous. As the least-published of the four writers (unpublished, in fact), I read first. When Antwon introduced me, he said nothing about my work, my bio, my qualifications, only, “I met this writer through my friend Don.”

  Afterward, my cousin came up to congratulate me. He was an investment banker and showed up in a suit. He smiled mischievously and said, “I know how those West Virginia back roads are,” referring to the geography both my narrator and myself shared. I wanted to tell him just because he recognized some of the details didn’t mean the story was true. I wanted to take him through line by line, noting every exaggeration, every misrepresentation, every fantasy and lie. Instead, I said, simply, “I did not jack off in my parents’ Dodge Caravan,” although, in truth, I had. I told him my friends were taking me out for a drink and asked if he wanted to join. He said no, he had to return to the office. I pointed out it was almost midnight. He said something about Asian markets and left.

  Several of my friends were in the audience, too, and they waited their turn to talk to me. It was my first time reading one of my stories, and I was grateful for their goodwill. But I wasn’t listening to what they were saying. Instead, I was looking around, searching for Antwon.

  I spotted him across the room talking to the guy who wrote for the Village Voice and who had read an essay about growing up in Rochester and the woman next door who had taught him how to be a drag queen. Everyone seemed to want to talk to Antwon. It made sense. The reading was as much about him, the curator, as it was about us, the readers. Besides, he was more established and better known than any of us. Don pointed out, swirling around Antwon, several luminaries from the downtown scene: an F-to-M transsexual sex columnist; a performance artist who referred to herself as “A Woman Who Just So Happens to Have a Beard”; a cabaret artist whose cult following included Parker Posey, Debbie Harry, and Courtney Love (when she was in town). I waited a long time to talk to Antwon, hovering close to him, searching for an opening, but I never found one. I finally left.

  In the coming weeks, I waited to hear from him. I waited for him to invite me to his office. I would dress better this time and order a cannoli instead of those cookies. He would smile at me from across the table and say, “I’m glad I asked you to read. Everyone was impressed. I was impressed.” But he didn’t call.

  The next time Don came home from meeting Antwon (Dick’s: draft), he didn’t say if Antwon mentioned the reading or if he mentioned me, and I didn’t allow myself to ask.

  3.

  When I arrived at Don’s house, climbed the back stairs, opened the door with my extra key, the first person I saw was Antwon, standing at the stove stirring soup. He was shirtless, the hair on his chest shot through with gray. He and Don must have just come from the studio. They were sweaty and seemed hungry. Antwon was cooking from the vegetarian cookbook he gave Don and me as a housewarming gift five years ago when we first moved in together in Crown Heights. It lay next to the stove, open to the recipe for mulligatawny soup, a dish I had been eating my whole life and didn’t need a recipe to make.

  “Taste,” he said, and scooped up a spoonful. He blew on it, cupped a hand beneath, and held it out to Don, who was also shirtless, sitting at a small table.

  I watched as Don let himself be fed.

  The previous fall, Don and I had moved to upstate New York, just a few hours from New York City, but a world away. It was my idea; I wanted to go to grad school for creative writing. I told Don I couldn’t do it in the city; it was too distracting. He was reluctant to move, but he eventually conceded. He found a graduate program in dance. Our schools were two hours apart, and we took turns visiting each other on weekends.

  Don was renting the upstairs apartment in a small house a block from campus. His landlord was a farmer who lived in the next town over. When he showed us the apartment, he was wearing jeans and work boots caked in mud. He didn’t remove them before walking all over the carpet. He also didn’t say anything about the downstairs neighbors.

  Several days after Don had moved into his apartment and I had moved into mine, Don told me he still hadn’t met them or even seen them. But he’d heard them. He said during the day, their blinds were closed, their windows and doors shut. But several nights a week, around two or three in the morning, Don woke to the thump thump thump of their stereo blasting techno music. He said he could feel it pulsating through the thin floor. After a few weeks, one night when I was sleeping over and hearing the din for myself, Don said, “Enough,” threw back the covers, splashed water on his face, and padded downstairs to talk to them. When he returned, the volume was maybe microscopically lower, maybe not. “What happened?” I asked. He said, “I don’t know what those boys are on—coke, speed, crystal meth. Their eyes were like Frisbees. I’m not going back down there.”

  It had been a difficult year. We weren’t prepared for the cold, gray winter that seemed like it would never end. It was particularly difficult for Don, because he didn’t like his program, which was reputable but stale. The best-known faculty member choreographed Broadway musicals. Don’s work, by contrast, was experimental. In so many ways, he felt like an alien.

  That was why he had invited Antwon, why he had spent so much time convincing the other members of the visiting guest artist committee that Antwon would be perfect for a one-week residency. Don was frustrated and craved the creative boost that would accompany Antwon’s visit. He also hoped that, as a byproduct of meeting Antwon, the students and faculty would have a greater understanding and appreciation for Don’s own edgy work.

  When he first told me he was thinking about bringing Antwon, I thought about saying no. Antwon had been out of our lives, more or less, for almost a year, and I was grateful. But I held my tongue, thinking, Don needs this. And now here he was, feeding Don soup. He’d been here all week teaching classes; these were the last t
wo days.

  To cap off the residency, Antwon was planning to perform one of his own pieces at an informal student concert that night and the next. I’d never seen his work and wasn’t quite sure what to expect, though I knew, of course, Don loved it.

  Antwon’s piece was titled Yours. He described it as an exercise in “relinquishing control” and “surrendering to the desires of others.” The performance worked like this. Antwon would pick three people from the audience and ask them to stand on the side of the stage. They would each be responsible for a body part, controlling whether he saw, spoke or moved by saying eyes, mouth, or body. Then Antwon would pick someone else to stand at the other edge of the stage with six large cards numbered five through zero in descending order. The audience would determine the length of the performance because whenever anyone got bored that person could call out the number on the card—five!—which the person holding the cards would then drop, revealing the next number in descending order. The numbers would get called one by one until the audience reached zero and the dance was over. Anyone from the audience could call out a number whenever he or she got bored. It was perfectly democratic.

  The first night, the performance didn’t last long. The audience wasn’t interested in Antwon. Most of the other dances featured pretty girls and MTV choreography or classical ballet, and when the girls performed, their parents and boyfriends cheered and whistled and snapped photos. When Antwon performed, they read their programs and looked at their watches, wondering if they’d get home in time to watch their favorite television shows. They called out numbers five to zero quick as a space-shuttle countdown.

  At home that night, Antwon was demoralized. “That was one of the worst concerts and worst audiences I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve been performing a long time.”

  “Actually, I kind of liked the routine to Britney’s ‘Stronger,’ ” I said, “especially the part where the girl jumped off the ballet barre.” I was partly joking, partly not—a tone Don was familiar with by now.