The Fuck-Up

by Arthur Nersesian

  “That’s all right,” he said, “I’m responsible for it.”

  “It’s no problem.”

  “No!” he was suddenly angry. “Only I’m allowed to deal with the money!”

  Perhaps he was still angry over the night’s argument. I pissed quickly to the copulating moans in the abutting stall and wondered why Miguel was so touchy. Miguel returned to the office and put all the night’s money into the drop bag and locked it. After looking at the tally sheet, I was surprised to see that the theater had only earned four hundred bucks. That meant that only a hundred people had come—but the theater was full all night.

  While locking up the place, Miguel said that he felt there was still a tension between us due to the discussion, so he invited me for a beer. Instead of going to a bar, though, we stopped in at the Korean deli on the corner and got a six pack. Miguel explained that three nearby theaters were showing midnight films. The Saint Mark’s was showing Blade Runner, the Eighth Street was showing Rumble Fish, and the Waverly was showing Stop Making Sense. Miguel knew Ian, the manager at the Eighth Street, so we could get in free. I didn’t want to deal with Pepe, so we swigged beers and walked to the theater.

  While watching the film, I wasn’t sure if it was the beer or the picture but the image seemed liquidy and unsteady. Either I or the film was drunk. When it was over, we decided that we were both still thirsty.

  After the beer, the walk, the joking, and then the film, I couldn’t have guessed that our earlier argument might’ve still been raging in Miguel’s mind. He led the way to a bar on Fourth Street called The Bar. Only when we entered did I realize that it was a gay bar. I don’t know how well I disguised my apprehension, but it was the very first time I was ever in a gay bar. I immediately sensed that Miguel still wasn’t convinced about my assumed sexuality.

  After ordering beers, Miguel started with sidelong glances while assuming a well-trained unassuming posture. I kept my eyes on safe inanimate objects, the pool table, the wayward bottles, and so on. Finally I heard him utter, “What do you think of these two guys?”

  “Real nice,” I replied with no idea of where he was looking.

  “Okay,” he replied jokingly. “These two are ours.”

  “What?” I winced in disbelief.

  “They are ours,” he enunciated. I looked up and noticed his stare, deft and fixed like a matador’s sword preparing for the final kill. He knew I was full of bull. It was time to either awkwardly laugh and tell him the truth or bluff it right to the end.

  Miguel’s upper lip was twisting and rolling now as if beset by Parkinson’s disease. Following his line of vision, I saw two guys who looked like they were the result of the crossbreeding of storm troopers and surfing bums. Was there any escape route? I considered the plausibility of announcing some dreaded venereal ailment. But then Miguel probably wouldn’t permit me to work. Slowly they stepped out from the screen of disbelief and started sauntering over.

  “Hi,” Miguel said smilingly.

  “Hi,” they said back. Everyone seemed familiar and, except for my sudden dumbfoundedness, the procedure seemed to be so gracefully lubricated that I wondered whether everyone already knew each other.

  “Warm day, wasn’t it?”

  “Precious for a February.”

  “Spring’s just around the corner.”

  “And summer’s just around spring’s corner.” They sounded like placidminded housewives leaning out on adjacent window sills.

  “You should join us. We’re going back out to the Golden State tomorrow.”

  “Gosh, I’m getting sweaty just thinking about it.”

  I stared at the ground and listened to everyone contribute a line to this potpourri conversation. It was a three-way dialogue that amounted to nothing more than a show of good faith; all meant well and were sane and shared common wants. Now Miguel started walking over to the bar with one of them. The remaining one, the hulkier of the two, was left standing with me. I maintained an autistic fixation of the filthy tiled floor, but evidently he found even that cute because he just kept gazing at me.

  “Hi,” he softly bellowed. I finally looked up. Tiny tributaries of sweat collected down the sharp part of his face, as if he had just arisen from a pool; apparently he had danced to an excess.

  “What happened to your arm?” One couldn’t help but notice the missing sleeve and the bandage.

  “An accident,” 1 quickly replied, hoping to avoid any sympathy that might turn into affection.

  “Looks kinda cool.” He touched the surrounding area, tenderly nudging my arm under a soft drop light. Lowering his nose to the spot, he sniffed it: a dirty bandage with a dry line of blood crusted along the exterior.

  “You can have it when I’m done,” I said, referring to the bandage. He accepted the offer and proposed buying drinks in return.

  “I don’t drink.”

  “How about a walk?”

  If a walk meant what I suspected then I was a gimp. But all the while, I felt Miguel’s microscopic stare haunting me for results. If I could just walk with this guy until after the bar closes; he wouldn’t be able to return to make his report, then I could dump him. And since this guy was leaving tomorrow Miguel would never be able to confirm anything. He’d have to believe whatever I told him.

  “Good idea, let’s walk.” He got his leather night jacket, and we both gave farewell nods to our companions and left. All were right, it was a beautiful night, but it felt more like autumn than spring. The glacier of winter’s cold was still ahead, not behind us. We walked without any destination, which was okay with me because to establish any destination in this vocabulary of clichés and euphemisms might sound like a commitment of some kind. For a New York night, the sky was clear. Aside from the many lighted skyscrapers, which were New York’s consolation for having no visible constellations, I could make out the star, the big one in the northern sky. We strayed westward. And since we were only on Second Avenue there was a lot of westerliness before us.

  The oddities of the night included a crab-like man hunching under a huge ghetto blaster angled on his shoulder and back. It was playing “Purple Rain.” Turning north, we journeyed to the corner of Saint Marks Place and Bowery, and as we passed the Transient Hotel, we were propositioned by a hooker who couldn’t intuit our alleged longings. Passing Cooper Union, we walked around an array of garbage, which was street vendor merchandise, unsold and abandoned from earlier that day. Looking north on Fourth Avenue, I saw the clock at the Metropolitan Life Building and the outline of the Empire State Building, an attractive view that was to be barred with the erection of the Zeckendorf Towers in ‘86. Walking through the parking lot on Astor Square, we swung south down Lafayette past the Public Theater. On Houston Street, we noticed a makeshift abode: an old table covered with boxes adjacent to an old sofa—an ingenious housing project for a group of derelicts. Making a right at Houston, we passed the NYU projects with the Picasso centerpiece. There, the wanton one initiated a conversation. “David Byrne lives in one of those apartments.” I could think of no reply.

  We turned south on West Broadway. There, through the store windows, we saw art. I wasn’t sure whether or not he was making an advance, but as we were nearing Spring Street, the wordless one took out his penis and urinated against a metal pull-down gate that had the word BOONE painted on it. As the stream of urine trailed from the gate across the sidewalk and into the gutter, he mumbled with a grin, “Wanna taste?”

  “I’m a believer in nice, slow courtships.” To this he sighed tiredly.

  “Then you should move to my old town,” he replied. “That’s why I left.”

  “And that’s why you came here? For the more accelerated life?”

  “Well, that and the culture.”

  “What do you mean, culture?”

  “You know the opera, dance, Broadway. This is the center of culture. Isn’t that the reason everyone comes here?”

  “I came to New York for the roaches, the filth, the sense of intim
idation, the foul odors, the violence and…oh yeah, the sky-rocket rents and the over-population, not to forget the freezing winters or the insanely hot summers.”

  “If you don’t like it, why don’t you leave?”

  “Don’t like it!” I replied. “But where else can I get all this?”

  The guy wrinkled his nose boyishly and made a completely innocent expression that made me laugh. He was cute, handsome, and seemed like a decent, intelligent guy; it just wasn’t my ballgame. I started to feel bad that I was just using him. It was a shame that he wasn’t as cold as everyone else. I had no business being in this situation, but I wanted my theater job even if making this poor guy into a fool was the price. One loses a little bit of one-self with each cruel gain. I decided to limit the humiliation as much as possible. I gave the guy a sporting slap on the back. I noticed a clock in a store window, the bar was still open so we proceeded slowly south toward the dawn rising over Canal Street.

  People were starting to come out of their little holes, a new day was stepping up to the mike. Soon, the bar would be safely closed, it was time to relieve the misery of this wounded yesterday. We cut a left on Canal and exchanged some notion of going to Chinatown.

  “What time is your flight?” I asked, as we crossed Broadway.

  “Three o’clock.”

  “Well mine is now,” I replied and dashed down the flight of subway stairs. An R train fat with people was sitting in the station making awkward attempts at sliding its doors shut. The beach boy was tumbling down behind.

  “Wait a second,” he yelled. As he fumbled through his pockets for a token, I hurdled like a gazelle over the turnstile and shoved in just as the doors locked.

  Looking through the plate glass on the subway door, 1 could see the panic in his eyes, like a lost child in the crowd rushing upstairs. I made rapid and meaningless gestures that tried to indicate concern and sorrow. As the train pulled out of the station, I regretted that this random guy had been made into my Exhibit “A” for Miguel. Slowly I made it back to Helmsley’s.

  SIX

  I wearily walked up the stairs to Helmsley’s apartment and found the door unlocked. When I opened it and flipped on a light, I wished I was back on the train. His house had been busted up. Clothing was tossed, dishes were broken. I noticed that some of his prized books had been damaged. No one was home. My first guess was that a struggle had occurred. Where the hell was Helmsley? Maybe he too had been brutalized.

  His first German printing of Spengler’s The Decline of the West had declined into shreds. His nineteenth century folio facsimile of Shakespeare’s tragedies was tragic. His autographed first edition of Being and Nothingness was now the latter.

  When most of the harvest was in, Helmsley walked through the door. Wordlessly he dropped onto the couch and threw his head back, closing his eyes. I immediately noticed that his reddened nose had a new angle to it, his hair was tousled and his old clothes were tugged and ripped.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “I got into a fight,” he replied with a nasal honk. He was a mess.

  “Well, I’m back from work,” I replied furiously. And putting a letter opener that might serve as a weapon in my pocket, I said, “Let’s go kick some ass.”

  “We can’t.” There must have been too many of them.

  “Then I’ll call the police.” I started dialing.

  “Put it down—it was Angela,” he said and didn’t look at me. I didn’t know what to say. I wrapped some ice in a towel, brought it to him, and inspected his nose. Considering his nose was broken and a chunk of his precious collection had been mauled, he seemed to be taking it well. Perhaps he was just fatigued.

  “Well, I suppose that ends that relationship,” I finally said, not knowing what else to say.

  He looked to the ground and began whimpering that he didn’t know how to deal with this. He tried discussing it rationally, but she had kept pounding at him. When he pulled his shirt off, I saw welts and bruises zebraed along his lower chest, his ribs bruised, probably cracked.

  “Exactly what happened?”

  “Well,” he started, as his fingers ran across the lumps rising out of his scalp. “We were lying in bed this morning, just a couple hours ago, and she said that it was time for me to arise. I explained that there was no reason to get up, but she insisted that she wanted to go out for breakfast immediately. Maybe she’s hypoglycemic.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I said that I wanted to sleep for another hour.”

  “What happened next?”

  “That’s when she shoved me hard with her foot.”

  “And how did you respond?”

  “I told her violence was the language of animals.” I waited for him to tell me more, but he volunteered nothing. “What did you do next?”

  “She laughed and made some weird reference to colleges and called me a wimp and that’s when I told her to stop laughing, and she slapped me.”

  “Did you hit her back?” I yelled at him.

  “Of course not. I told her that if she was angered over something it should be discussed.”

  “And was it discussed?”

  “No, I told her she was acting like a simpleton.”

  “A simpleton, huh?”

  “Yeah, that’s when she started tearing up the books, and when I tried to stop her, she hit me on the nose with an ashtray.” No wonder he didn’t want to volunteer anything; what a pathetic tale.

  “Maybe you should go to a hospital; I think you’ve got a broken rib.”

  “They don’t tape ribs anymore.”

  “Your nose is bent to one side.”

  “I never cared for symmetry,” he tried joking, “and it isn’t worth seven hours in a waiting room to look harmonious. Just help me into bed.”

  I helped him into his room and laid him on his bed. Then silently I unknotted his shoes and helped him off with his clothes. He dropped the ice pack to the floor and laid quietly with his aches and pains.

  “What happened to you?” He pointed to my shoulder from his supine position.

  “Nothing, I’ll tell you when we’re awake,” I replied and pulled down the shade, concealing the morning light. He quickly drifted off. I kicked my shoes off and laid on the couch. As the sun rose high in the Brooklyn sky, I listened to Helmsley’s newly acquired snore, thanks to the newly angulared nose. I also thought of last night’s silly date and slowly slipped into asleep.

  When I awoke, it was pitch black outside; it was seriously late. Helmsley was still soundly sleeping. I tiptoed into the bathroom, where I showered and carefully peeled off my arm bandage. I should have insisted on stitches, because the scar was crisp and permanent. I prepared a new bandage, dressed, and left. It was about midnight and Brooklyn, unlike Manhattan, still had that old duration of time labelled “late.” Places were closed and mass sleeping was in effect. People obeyed the sun’s ebb. But I was now too corrupted by the irregular cycles of Manhattan time; I was irrevocably awake.

  I dressed and went to the F train and paced the empty station. I looked along the tracks covered with filth and followed them as far as I could up the dark tunnel. Looking in the other direction, I could see the sky. At this stop the elevated track poured its rails purgatorially into the ground.

  Waiting for a train in New York requires more than just patience; it also demands a defensive outlook. During the early eighties, the city cordoned off “designated waiting areas.” They were encased in yellow overhead signs and usually they were within view of the token sellers, so if you were beaten to death within this section, your benefactors might have a good case at suing the city.

  Despite the wolf-pack gangs and the doubtful worth of the overpriced token, I had nurtured a perverse pleasure in riding the subways. I would get a ninety-cent thrill out of pressing against the front unwashed window, leaning next to the conductor’s booth and straining into the near darkness as the train whipped between the ribbed support beams through the enigmatic bowels
of the great city. What subway riding in New York offers that far surpasses a train ride anywhere else is the wonderful relief upon arriving safely at your destination. I experienced this relief an hour later.

  I got off at Fourteenth Street and walked across it, past the many cheap storefronts that were all covered with metal pull-down gates at night. Past the old Luchow’s and the Palladium, I walked. From the corner of Third Avenue, I could see the Zeus Theater flag snapping in the wind. Why the theater had a proud flag, I wasn’t sure. The theater lights were still on and I had no particular place to go, so I decided to stop in and see Miguel. When I got to the corner of Thirteenth Street, I noticed the crowd out front. But then I remembered, the vanguardists Hans and Grett were premiering their film tonight. As I approached the NYU film students and punks flocking outside, I waited as gaggles of gays slowly filtered through and out, and then I pushed in. Hans, who was acting as a doorman, let me in. I walked rapidly through the theater.

  “Hey!” the Cambodian porter Thi yelled.

  Accidentally I had stepped into a pile of condoms, Kleenex and tiny squeezed out tubes of KY-Jel. Thi had marshalled the garbage together with the blowing machine, which was strapped to his back. Quickly he shovelled the pile into a black multi-plied garbage bag and sealed it. In the office I found Miguel chatting with a bunch of skinheads. He greeted me with a lapse of silence. I felt compelled to say something managerial, so I asked, “How’s business?”

  He pointed thumbs down. “It must be the nice weather.”

  I nodded and left the office; I didn’t mention that I had just seen enough gays exiting to start a gondolier’s union; he had to be stealing money. I decided to keep hushed and wait. Soon, Miguel left his office, the skinheads scattered, and he joined me in the lobby. The crowd was now entering, and as the guests filed past the box office, Hans and Grett handed everyone a plastic cup filled with champagne.

  “They sure must’ve put a lot of money into this,” I mumbled to Miguel.

  “No,” Miguel confided, “a generic case of Astor Home Champagne on sale from the New Year’s Eve surplus. Anyway you got to be a little zonked in order to truly relate to the full cinematic reality.” He wasn’t smiling, so I guess he was serious.