by Jarett Kobek
We’d struck up a conversation with a girl who’d holidayed in Florida with her family and returned on a commuter flight. “The Sunshine State,” she said, “is fucking white trash, but the weather is way better.”
“East Coast people don’t know anything about the cold,” said Baby. “Go out to the Midwest. Lake Superior will freeze off your nipples.”
“I shouldn’t much like that,” I said.
This apartment somewheres in the East Village was as dark as unlit thickets, as boggy as Grimpen Mire. Pitch radiant, people dancing and talking, black light and disco ball and very primitive laser. One of those awful, terrible parties where the insuppressible stench of alcohol seeps from everyone’s pores. Strong enough that the odor was noticeable even to myself, and darlings, I was three-and-a-quarter sheets to the wind.
“Did you go home for Christmas?” the girl asked.
“We stayed in the city,” I said. “I couldn’t begin to imagine a return to Californy. I’ve only just started to understand New York. Everyone in California is dead. D-E-A-D. As a doornail. Deader than dead. Ne plus ultra dead.”
“So it goes,” said a voice behind us, with a baritone so deep that it shook my bones. Baby made a face. “So it goes,” said the voice again. A young man of about the same years as myself. One couldn’t imagine that deep of a voice from such a youthful body.
His fashion was neo-retro, Edwardian frock coat meets the pastel colorations of the 1980s. A New Romantic in the wrong year and the wrong country. His travesty hair was mouse brown and limpid. I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that his mother doubled as his barber.
“I beg your pardon, but that’s some rum talk,” I said. “Whatever is your name?”
“We met last month,” he said. “You’re Adeline. I remember you. Why don’t you remember me?”
“Adeline’s memory is the worst,” said Baby, rather unhelpfully.
“Pay no regard to this disagreeable young homosexual,” I said. “And speak your name.”
He mouthed the word, but a scream from the far side of the room engulfed his sound. Music ended, gasps and silence. I pushed my way through vile bodies towards the commotion.
There, beneath purple light, two wretched boys did battle. Professional pugilists these fellas were not. Arms, legs, headlocks, kicks, punches, all awkward. One bled from his forehead.
“Ain’t it an appalling spectacle?” I asked Baby, but Baby wasn’t beside me.
“Busy, busy, busy,” said the unknown boy with mousy brown hair.
Both contestants were ejected with force. I watched from the window to see if they’d continue their battle in the street, but on the pavement they embraced, perhaps crying about the awful pain of existence, and walked arm in arm towards Greenwich Village, singing an off-key and wobbling rendition of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”
Human variety, said I to my own self, will never cease to amaze you.
The boy with limpid hair went by the name of Kevin. We talked no small amount, regrettably much of it about the Kurt Vonnegut novels Player Piano and Jailbird, neither of which had I read. I informed Kevin that I’d breezed through Breakfast of Champions, which was a dirty lie, and Kevin sneered, “Oh, everyone’s read Breakfast of Champions. To really understand Vonnegut, you gotta read his others!” I rolled my eyes, perhaps not visibly, at the suggestion.
I invited Kevin back to our suite. On 9th Street, Baby pulled me to one side and whispered, “Adeline, not him!” but I psshed and tssshed and sssshed. For his part, Kevin did not regard the mild controversy, being rather enraptured with the manner in which his shoes struck the cement.
When we returned to 31 Union Square West, our old Bank of the Metropolis, poor Baby suffered yet another exile on the couch. Kevin climbed up the ladder, crawled into my bed, removed his clothes, removed my clothes, and proceeded to screw out my brains.
Now, reader, had this been an ordinary night in the adventures of your narratress, our Vonnegut-inspired friend would have departed in the light of sober morning and not made his reappearance. Yet it was New Year’s Day. Holiday spirit overtook me.
Kevin exuded a certain appealing quality. Sleeping buck naked except for a graying tube sock on his left foot, the rise and fall of his bare chest with its scraggle of hair, a clicking sound emerging from his throat each time that he exhaled.
One sees in this boy one’s own age, immature, poorly dressed, terrible haircut, offering little in the way of conversation. Somehow, something about this acnefied picture makes a convincing argument. One ends up smitten.
And if that ain’t sympathy for the awkwardness of being male, what is?
This, you see, is how I ended up with my second college boyfriend.
FEBRUARY 1987
Suzanne Comes to Visit
Ringing phone at 7 am on a Friday morning in February, climbing down the ladder in a half-conscious fury, answering to the shrill voice of my inebriated mother.
“Adeliiiiiiine,” said Mother. “You’ll never guess where I am!”
“Where?” I asked, weary.
“The International Terminal at JFK! I took the red-eye!”
“Uhm, why are you, like, there?” I asked.
“Adeliiiiiiiiine,” said Mother. “I’m in New York for the week! I couldn’t let you miss Christmas and not get any presents! I’ve even brought your gifts from Dahlia and Charles!”
“You’re here?” I asked. “In New York?”
“Yes, dear,” said Mother. “And for the whole visit, I’ll speak entirely in a Noo Yawk accent! Fuggedaboutit! What street do youse live on? Tirty tee and uh tird!”
“Have you been drinking?” I asked.
“Only uh few highbawls on da foist-class aeroplane,” she said.
“Mom,” I said. “Please stop. I can’t take it.”
“Adeliiiiiiine,” said Mother. “I’m waiting for my baggage and then I’ll get a car into the city! I’m staying at the Plaza! I know you’ll come to lunch, won’t you!”
“Whatever,” I said. “What time?”
“Nooooon, Adeliiiiiiiine,” said Mother. “I’ll be waiting in the lobbbbby!”
“See you then,” I said and hung up.
Enrolling at the Parsons School for Design was clearly an attempt to escape Mother, to escape Dahlia and Dahlia’s awful husband, Charles, to escape greater Los Angeles, to escape the Crossroads School for the Arts and Sciences and the genius vision of its founder, Paul Cummins. I’m quite certain that somewhere in the primordial stew of my ridiculous brain, as I considered my acceptance letters to various educational institutions, a voice had spake, saying, “Adeline, darling, consider matters. Two thousand four hundred thirty-nine and seven-tenths of a mile is a looooooooong way from home.”
Yet this voice had not contended with the dread reality of Mother.
Despite her many depravities, the woman rose each morning and willed away the ritualized hangovers. Smearing a thick patina of lipstick and rouge across her face, she soldiered into her office and managed the daylights out of her business affairs.
We’d only grown richer since Daddy’s death. Money, that great barrier to so many dreams, proved no impediment. Mother could visit whenever the fancy took her. My one surprise was that she’d waited this long.
I imagined scenarios by which to dissuade her from future holidays, considered a perilous visit with the hopheads and roughs down by Ray’s and the Pyramid, then, with more deliberation, abandoned it. Mother would find the lower orders so charming, so quaint, adore their patched denim and their disease-encrusted syringes. She’d coo over the bold graphic type of the Newsday slogan on Ray’s awning: TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE COMICS.
The night prior, I’d finished reading an uncorrected proof of Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel, The Rules of Attraction. I’d uncovered the proof in the Strand, deep in a pile of nonsense and novels.
It often seems that when one reads a book, the events of one’s life take on a distinct resemblance to the fictional narrative.
The Rules of Attraction played through my mind like the blurry hurdy-gurdy filmstrip of a Kinetoscope. A scene in which Paul Denton is called to New York by his mother, who is taking her own jaundiced bite from the Big Apple.
I climbed up the ladder. Baby in the spare bed, his slumber undisturbed by the ringing. What a blessing is ignorance, thought I to myself. What an absolute delight.
Perhaps he should accompany me to the Plaza. But Mother would love Baby. It was impossible to miss. What if Baby anchored her? What if she came back for him?
White paint of the ceiling. Engines moving around the park, the horns of traffic, the rising voices of pedestrians. Thousand thread-count against my legs and arms. Morning breath in my mouth, dry cotton tongue. Noxious fumes, diesel, gasoline, uncollected garbage. Another scent as well.
Kevin.
*
“Why,” asked Kevin, “do I have to meet her?”
“You’ll simply adorate her,” I said. “She possesses every favorable quality you can imaginate.”
In the backseat of a cab motoring towards the Plaza. People could make cruel comments about Kevin, and God knows that Baby surely did, but, if nothing else, the boy offered reliability.
“How were you occupying yourself? What else could possibly be filling your time?” I asked.
“Studying,” he said. “I have an exam on Monday.”
Kevin attended New York University, pursuing his undergraduate degree. I simply cannot remember what it was that he studied. Literature, perhaps, or some other putrid nonsense.
I put my hand on the back of his head. I’d grown fond of his haircut. “What’s all this, then,” I asked in an atrocious cockney accent. “When ’ave you attended class, guvnor?”
“My grades are a lot better than you’d think,” he said.
We disembarked by the drab equestrian statue of William Tecumseh Sherman and Wingéd Nike. We ran across the street during a lull in traffic.
Mother was nowhere within the lobby’s confines. After some exploration, we uncovered her in the Oak Room, where she’d pickled herself in some very choice brine.
My sudden appearance elicited a screeching sound that one associates with oversized birds of prey: “Adeliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine!” She grasped me in her claws, swallowing her daughter into a sloshed hug.
Mother pulled away and spoke to Kevin. New work had been done on her face. Perhaps an eye lift? Her bronzed flesh too taut, too outré, too close to the same inhuman visage shared by all Angelino women of a certain age and social standing. I longed for the original true face of my mother, the smile destroyed by a decade of surgery.
She made an effort at afternoon tea, but I insisted that we find a place more authentically Noo Yawk. A tiny pizza parlor off Fifth Avenue, the tomato sauce of our slices matching Mother’s garish red power suit.
“Adeliiiiiine,” said she, stuffing her face, “New York has the best pizza in the world!”
“It sure does, Mom,” I said.
“Keviiiiiin,” said Mother. “How do you know my Adeliiiiiine!”
“We, like, met at a party,” I said.
“On New Year’s Eve,” said Kevin.
“Don’t you dare provide details,” I whispered.
He ignored this demand, talking about the party, about what we had done, about how long we had been dating and many other inessentialities. The timbre and bass of his voice vibrated me to the absolute verge.
“Have you read much Vonnegut?” he asked Mother.
“No,” she said. “But Adeliiiiine’s father was friends with the producer of the film adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five! You remember Jennings Lang, don’t you, Adeliiiiine!”
“Uhm,” I said. “No?”
“He died last year!” said Mother.
“Okay,” I said.
“I envy you,” said Kevin to Mother. “Adeline and I only get these books in a single dose, when Vonnegut’s career is in its final stages. But you’re old enough to’ve seen them come out one by one, and experience the dialogue between author and audience.”
He may as well have painted a crucifix on his back, bathed in the blood of lambs and thrown himself down amongst the lions. Mother stiffened, her smile evaporated. She stopped speaking in exclamation points. To talk about her age! A perfect faux pas.
Having proved the weight of his salt, Kevin tagged along for all subsequent encounters. Our questionable troika visited the Met, FAO Schwarz, the Museum of Natural History, uptown, downtown. Once, while Kevin contained his self within a public restroom, Mother inquired as to why he was such an indelible presence and I responded, as sweet and sickly as I could muster, “But Mom, I’m, like, in love!”
FEBRUARY 1987
Suzanne Goes Home
On the day that Mother left, Baby and I sat in the common area, he at the table, myself on the couch. “Are you glad she’s gone?” he asked.
“It isn’t that I don’t miss her,” I said. “But she’s simply exhausting. All that theatrical training. Daddy discovered her waiting tables at a two-bit coffee shop on Wilshire Boulevard. Her tips paid for acting classes. She’s been schooled by the very best in the fine art of sucking up the atmosphere in any room.”
“Why did you let Kevin meet her? Why not me?” he asked.
Speak of exhausting. How often Baby had asked and how often I had told him that it was not a matter of preference but a choice of expediency. I considered my fifteenth version of the same response when my thoughts were scattered by the buzz of the intercom.
“Yes?” I asked, holding down the microphone button.
“Your moms is here,” said the doorman.
“Adeliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine, it’s meeeeee!” cried my mother, faint and distant.
“Send her up,” I said into the intercom. “Now, young man,” I said to Baby, “you’ll discover what happens when a wish comes true.”
There is always a loooooooooong period between the interaction over the intercom and the moment when a guest arrives in the flesh. This is an empty space, a meaningless moment that exists outside the realm of conventional time. It is impossible to fill, and any individual who acts with nonchalance upon their guest’s arrival is, at best, a damnable liar. No one is calm nor collected within that liminal zone. Everyone always waits, rife with anxiety.
Mother. Knocking.
“Adeliiiiiiiiiiiiine!”
I imagined her on the other side, staring into the blue door, looking at the gray carpets, at the awkward angles of the hallway, weighted in thought, discovering where her money went.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, weakly smiling.
“Adeliiiiiiiiiiiiine!” she said, pushing in, hugging me. “I couldn’t leave without seeing where you live! Kevin isn’t here, is he!”
“No,” I said. “He’s not.”
“Oh good!” she said. “We need some girl time!”
“Mom,” I said. “I’m, like, not alone. You should meet Baby.”
The world ended.
Baby squirmed in discomfort, aware of the pause, the shaking, the silence. I worried that he would find her faintly ridiculous, with her drum-skin face and her pillbox hat. Of course he didn’t. One thing that I adored about Baby. He was never cruel.
“Hello?” he asked Mother.
“And who are you?” she whispered.
“Mom,” I said, “this is Baby. He’s a stray. I took him in. He, like, lives here.”
“I’m sure that he does,” she said. “I need to sit.”
She put herself on the couch.
“Baby,” she said. “Where did you come from?”
Baby went on and on and on and on about Wisconsin and whatever dreadful little hamlet he’s from, soliloquizing about the Rust Belt or the Dust Belt or the Must Belt and cheese and farming and dairy and the difference between raising chickens and tending cattle and how no one in Wisconsin will call a drinking fountain a drinking fountain, how instead Wisconsites will call a drinking fountain a bubbler.
My eyes floated, my focus of vision drifting throughout the room, avoiding Mother’s too-tight face as it twitched with suppressed emotion.
She stood and said, “Adeliiiiiiiine, Baby is going to wait here while you show me your roooooooooom.”
Mother looked at the ladder, at the twin lofted beds, at the desk, at the closet, at the throw pillows, at the cheap decorations, at the artwork, at the Christmas lighting, at a rain lamp that I’d acquired a few weeks earlier. It was turned on, illuminated, beads of oil dripping down around a reasonable copy of Athena Parthenos.
“It’s so charming, Adeliiiiine!” she said. “But this friend, this Baby, where did he come from?”
“In a squat down in the East Village.”
“Just like a movie!” she said. “And he’s alone in this world!”
“He doesn’t talk much about the past,” I said.
“It’s a good thing, angel!” she said. “Hold on to him! But Adeliiiiine!”
“Yes?” I asked.
“I know you hate taking my advice! Please just listen! One or two gay friends are fine, all women do it, but don’t make it a habit! No one likes a fag hag!”
Baby and I escorted her out, riding down in the elevator, passing beneath the portico. She’d kept a Town Car waiting, idling in front, a black Lincoln with a Middle Eastern driver.
She hugged me goodbye, threw her arms around Baby, saying, “I’m so glad to have met you! I’m sooooo glad Adeliiiiiine found you!”
Mother crawled into the backseat, lowered her window, waved at us, shrieked out her pterodactyl goodbye. The car took off, heading south on Union Square West before dissolving into nothingness. I started to cry.
I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that Baby was bearing witness. He put his arms around me, pulled me into a tight embrace, and then, God help him, Baby started crying too.
“Why are you crying?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
A few people looked at us, and I wondered if it wasn’t because of my own outlandish outfit and tears and Baby’s farmfed looks. A swish middle-aged man, clad in sable from head to toe, sauntered over and said, “Don’t worry, we’re all dealing with it. Everything will be all right, you two. These things happen. Don’t take it so hard.”