by Bill Hayes
I am told by longtime New Yorkers that the subway used to be awful—garbage-strewn, graffiti-covered, suffocating in the summer, dangerous late at night all year round. And of course I know plenty of people who despise taking it today, even though the cars are remarkably safe, clean, and cool. I suggest they ride with me. I cannot take a subway without marveling at the lottery logic that brings together a random sampling of humanity for one minute or two, testing us for kindness and compatibility. Is that not what civility is?
The other day, I was on a local 6 going uptown and seated next to a young woman with a baby in a stroller. At each stop, a man (always a man) would enter the car and end up standing right above us. I had my iPod on and was just watching. Inevitably, each man would make goofy faces and smile at the baby, and the baby would smile and make faces back. At each stop, the standing man would be replaced by a new one, straight out of central casting: First, an older Latin guy. Then he gets off and a young black man appears. Then a white man in a suit. Then a construction worker with a hard hat. Tough guys. New York guys. All devoted to one important task: making a baby smile.
I have other subway stories to tell. And I could list lots more reasons why I like riding the 1, 2, 3, C, F, D, 4, 5, or L. But if pressed, I’d have to say that what I love most about the subways of New York is what they do not do. One may spend a lifetime looking back—whether regretfully or wistfully, with shame or fondness or sorrow—and thinking how, given the chance, you might have done things differently. But when you enter a subway car and the doors close, you have no choice but to give yourself over to where it is headed. The subway only goes one way: forward.
NOTES FROM A JOURNAL
5-9-09:
O says I must keep a journal.
And so I must.
I make notes on scraps of paper, the backs of envelopes, cocktail napkins. Sometimes dated, sometimes not.
_____________________
5-12-09:
I brought over a bottle of wine and we went up to O’s rooftop.
My one-month anniversary in NYC:
“Shall I get glasses?” asked O, flustered.
“No, no need.”
We took turns swigging from the bottle.
_____________________
5-31-09:
My friend Miguel visits my place. There’s nowhere to sit except the floor. “This apartment should not be legal,” he says. “There must be some code somewhere that’s being broken.”
_____________________
6-2-09:
To remember:
How I wake at 5:30 and watch the trees outside my window—the branches look like they are floating on wind drafts.
How the leaves flutter like giraffe’s lashes.
How I take a shower with the sun, a bird and a squirrel watching me.
How as the sun rose, the Chrysler cast a shadow on the MetLife building.
_____________________
6-17-09:
“Are you seeing anyone?” someone asks.
“Only New York,” I answer.
This is not 100 percent true.
O isn’t comfortable with anyone knowing about us and gets palpably nervous if we are out together and see someone he knows.
At the Bodega
THE SUMMER MICHAEL JACKSON DIED
It was nighttime, June 25, 2009, and I was standing at a streetlight on Seventh and Greenwich Avenue when I heard the news. Someone said it out loud, like a town crier, as he crossed against the light: “MICHAEL’S DEAD! MICHAEL’S DEAD! MICHAEL’S DEAD!” His death struck me as a rebuke to tabloid journalism, tabloid culture. Everything written about him, everything rumored, all the insinuations and allegations that had hounded him, driven him into isolation, his freakishness—none of it meant anything anymore, I felt sure. The only thing that would matter from now on was Michael’s music, which one heard everywhere in New York—blaring from car radios, playing in bars, boom boxes on stoops, and people dancing, literally dancing, on the streets and sidewalks and subway platforms. It sounded so innocent, joyful, romantic almost. At least, that’s how it seemed for a week or so. And then details started to emerge about his death—his OD’ing on anesthesia, the unseemly doctor, the lifetime of insomnia and sleeping pills—and soon Michael Jackson’s death was less Sylvia Plath, more Anna Nicole Smith. Very quickly, his music took on that tawdry quality, too. It all sounded wrong, tarnished or fraudulent somehow. I couldn’t hear “Rock With You” without picturing an insomniac Michael being put under with propofol.
I remember O had no idea who Michael Jackson was. “What is Michael Jackson?” he asked me the day after the news—not who but what—which seemed both a very odd and a very apt way of putting it, given how much the brilliant singer had transmuted from a human into an alien being. O often said he had no knowledge of popular culture after 1955, and this was not an exaggeration. He did not know popular music, rarely watched anything on TV but the news, did not enjoy contemporary fiction, and had zero interest in celebrities or fame (including his own). He didn’t possess a computer, had never used e-mail or texted; he wrote with a fountain pen. This wasn’t pretentiousness; he wasn’t proud of it; indeed, this feeling of “not being with it” contributed to his extreme shyness. But there was no denying that his tastes, his habits, his ways—all were irreversibly, fixedly, not of our time.
“Do I seem like I am from another century?” he would sometimes ask me, almost poignantly. “Do I seem like I am from another age?”
“You do, yes, you do.”
For me, this was part of the fascination with, part of my attraction to, him. I was seeing a few other men during my first summer in New York, but dates with O were completely different. We didn’t go to movies or to MoMA or to new restaurants or Broadway shows. We took long walks in the botanical garden in the Bronx, where he could expatiate on every species of fern. We visited the Museum of Natural History—not for the dinosaurs or special exhibitions but to spend time in the often-empty, chapel-like room of gems, minerals, and, especially, the elements—O knew the stories behind the discoveries of every single one. At night, we might walk from the West Village to the East, O talking excitedly nonstop, to have a beer and burger at McSorley’s Old Ale House.
I learned that not only had he never been in a relationship, he had also never come out publicly as a gay man. But in a way, he’d had no reason to do so—he hadn’t had sex in three-and-a-half decades, he told me. At first, I did not believe him; such a monk-like existence—devoted solely to work, reading, writing, thinking—seemed at once awe-inspiring and inconceivable. He was without a doubt the most unusual person I had ever known, and before long I found myself not just falling in love with O; it was something more, something I had never experienced before. I adored him.
Oliver and the Crabapple Trees
NOTES FROM A JOURNAL
7-09-09:
O’s 76th birthday:
After I kiss him for a long time, exploring his mouth and lips with my tongue, he has a look of utter surprise on his face, eyes still closed: “Is that what kissing is, or is that something you’ve invented?”
I laugh, disarmed. I tell him it’s patented—he’s sworn to secrecy.
O smiles.
“And if I hold you closely enough, I can hear your brain,” I tell him.
_____________________
8-18-09:
We talk about a scene in Roman Elegies in which Goethe taps out hexameters on his sleeping lover’s back:
“Fingertips counting in time with the sweet rhythmic breath of her slumber,” O recites from memory.
“Or his slumber,” I add.
_____________________
9-29-09:
Sometimes people recognize Oliver. Tonight, a young man approached our table and introduced himself. He was very flirtatious, which O enjoyed but did not reciprocate. “I already have one delectable addition to my life,” he said later. “That should be enough.”
_____________________
; 9-30-09:
Funny:
I like to get kind of verbal in bed sometimes, but I am finding this does not work well when you’re having sex with someone who’s practically deaf:
“What was that? Were you saying something?” O will ask in the heat of things with great sincerity.
“Oliver! Don’t make me repeat it!”
At which point, we both dissolve in laughter.
“Deaf Sex,” we affectionately call this.
_____________________
10-24-09:
Taking a C train from Seventy-Second to Fourteenth: I dash into the crowded car, reach for a pole to steady myself. The pole is still warm with heat from other riders’ hands.
“Did it hurt?” I hear.
I turn in the direction of the voice. Seated beneath me, a young Latina—maybe nineteen or twenty—meets my eyes. “Did that hurt?” she asks pointing to my arm. “Your tattoo?”
I smile. “Yeah, it did actually. The skin there is really thin—lots of nerve endings. But it was worth it.”
She nods.
“What do you want to get?” I ask her.
“A fairy—a little fairy—and then the Egyptian hieroglyph for destiny.”
She is wearing a copper-colored wig, cut into a blunt bob with severe bangs. She looks a like an Egyptian princess. She is the Cleopatra of the C train.
“That sounds wonderful,” I tell her. “Go for it.”
Cleopatra smiles and settles back into her seat.
_____________________
10-31-09:
O: “I don’t so much fear death as I do wasting life.”
Undated Note—October 2009:
Visited O in the hospital—a total knee replacement (alas, all those years of super-heavy weightlifting). At first, he looked mortified because a friend, who doesn’t know about us, was visiting him. But then, I could tell, he was happy I came.
_____________________
11-11-09:
Knee surgery has exacerbated other problems—sciatica and disc pain so severe O cannot sit to write. He might have to have back surgery. I construct a standing desk on the kitchen counter made from stacks of books and a nice flat piece of wood I found in the basement. He works nonstop through the night on his new book, The Mind’s Eye.
“Writing is more important than pain,” he says.
_____________________
Undated Notes—December 2009:
My head on O’s chest, he caresses my biceps, very, very softly. I think the Dilaudid has kicked in.
“You like those?” I ask.
“Oh yes—they’re like … beautiful tumors—”
I chuckle—how flattering.
“—voluptuous tumescences … !”
_____________________
I: “Do you need anything?”
O: “Could you pull off my socks?”
I smile, and do so, kiss him on the forehead, and say good night.
“I feel beautifully comfortable with you,” O says.
_____________________
11-21-09:
Note to self, on the back of a Verizon envelope:
“Sometimes it will be difficult and you’ll question why you ever moved here. But New York will always answer you.”
Yes, remember that: New York will always answer you.
_____________________
12-22-09:
On my way to the airport to visit family for the holidays, I stopped by O’s office to say goodbye. I found myself confessing something that has been gradually formulating in my mind for many weeks now, but never expressed: “I am in love with you, Oliver.” He fought back tears. I kissed his head, held him, told him it’s going to be okay, I’d be back from Seattle soon. He nodded. We walked out to the main room, where his two assistants, Kate and Hailey, work. “Watch over this guy,” I said. Then O and I (no longer having privacy) shook hands.
_____________________
12-26-09:
O, on the phone from NY, stutters to speak: “I know that I put up all kinds of restrictions. Barriers. And was reluctant to go places with you in public. I now want to say that I love you, too, and I would be happy to go anywhere with you.”
I am smiling broadly on the other side of the country.
“And I, with you, young man,” I tell him.
Young Love in the Park
A FISHERMAN ON THE SUBWAY
I met a fisherman on the 1 train one night.
It would have been hard to miss him even in a packed subway car. His two large fishing rods, like a pair of periscopes, towered a good head above anyone else. He had gotten on one stop after me. Gripping his poles with one hand, a train pole with the other, he studied the subway map over my shoulder. He was tall, maybe six-two, in his mid-twenties, and could have been part Dominican, part Vietnamese—island countries.
I watched his face as his scrunched-up eyes traced his route on the map and he got his bearings. Satisfied, he looked around then settled into the empty seat next to me. He corralled his poles between his knees.
You can’t be sitting next to a fisherman on a subway and not say something.
“Catch any?”
“Not today.” This did not appear to trouble him.
I was coming from work. The idea of coming from fishing instead of your job seemed pretty sweet. “Where would one go—where would I go if I wanted to fish?”
“Staten Island. Great fishing there—striped bass. But today I went to Battery Park—off the pier. Didn’t have much time. Just an hour.”
“Not even a nibble?”
“Oh yeah, lots, but no catches. They take a bite, feel something, feel the hook, spit it out. They’re smart, those fish. You’re sadly mistaken if you think you’re in control when you go fishing.”
He sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
I said I’d take his word for it.
“You gotta be patient,” he elaborated. “You can’t go out there for just an hour and expect to catch. They feel you out. I went today just to be out there—”
“—with the fish?”
He nodded. “And on the water.”
You can get so caught up in your life in New York that you forget: We live on an island, I thought to myself—an island. “That’s cool,” I murmured.
“Night’s the best time—if it’s clear, the stars are out, fish are running—”
I could almost picture it. I saw the Empire State Building in the background.
“Once I got a shark,” he said, more animated. “A basking shark—ugly thing. This was during the day. Took hundred-pound line and over an hour to pull him in.”
“Sharks in New York—now somehow that does not surprise me.”
He laughed.
The fisherman looked at his wristwatch and said he was just going to make it in time—just barely. He had to be at work in the Bronx at six.
I noticed that his watch already said six and mentioned this.
“Yeah, I keep it fifteen minutes fast—I’m always running late. I can’t stand to stop fishing.”
“Man, that’s love.” I stood up. “I wish you no subway delays—and no more sharks.” I said so long and got off at my stop.
He kept riding. He was going to make it just in time.
At Blue Mountain Center
NOTES FROM A JOURNAL
1-11-10:
O: “Every day, a word surprises me.”
_____________________
1-18-10:
O: “It’s really a question of mutuality, isn’t it?”
I: “Love? Are you talking about love?”
O: “Yes.”
_____________________
2-1-10:
A languid Sunday, afternoon turning into evening, evening into night, night to morning.
“I just want to enjoy your nextness and nearness,” O says.
He puts his ear to my chest and listens to my heart and counts the beats.
“Sixty-two,” he says with a satisfied s
mile, and I can’t imagine anything more intimate.
_____________________
2-7-10:
O tells me about a white-winged butterfly, made dirty by city soot early in the industrial age in England, which evolved quickly from white to soot-colored. And about a city bird (pigeon?) whose song rose in volume to be heard over the honking of cars, the noise of construction, traffic.
“There are rare instances in nature of accelerated evolution.”
I can’t help thinking of how much O himself has changed over the past year.
“I’ve noticed that,” I tell him.
_____________________
6-9-10:
We are on the roof of O’s building; 7 P.M.; the breeze is wonderfully warm; the sun is setting; and the clouds, against some stiff competition from the Manhattan skyline, are far more striking than anything in sight. But O is not able to look at them because he had surgery to remove a blood clot in his right eye (which he hopes will restore some of the sight lost when he was treated for melanoma on his optic nerve). For the next few days, he has to keep his head tilted down at all times to prevent further clotting or fluid accumulation.
“Tell me what they look like,” O says. “Describe the clouds.”
I pull him in close, so his face is buried in my chest, and I look to the sky. “Well”—I’m not sure where to begin—“they are large. Very large.”
“Yes?”
“And what’s especially remarkable is—yes, I’m not just seeing things—they are not moving, not moving at all. Which is surprising, because the wind is strong. But it’s as if they are holding their pose, so I can study them, so I can describe them to you.”
“Oh, lovely,” O murmurs.
“What I’m noticing, as never before, is not how white they are but how gray—a wonderful bluish-gray—pewter-colored.”