by Tim Murphy
Milly enlarges the image and the three peer at it awhile. “I don’t mind it,” Fenimore finally says. “It has some energy.”
“I like the pale colors,” says Keiko brightly. “She has ideas, I can see them.”
“I hope she’s taking an accounting class,” Mateo says.
“Oh, come on, Mateo!” Keiko protests. “Mean.”
“Harsh, bro,” Fenimore drawls. “We can’t all be as brilliant as you.”
Milly turns and looks at Mateo. She opens her mouth to say something, then just closes it and shakes her head, still looking at him. Yeah, yeah, he thinks. I know all your beefs with me, lady. How full of himself he is. His swagger as an artist. It’s very unbecoming to her, he knows. This isn’t an easy life, she always says, the artist’s path, and we have to support each other, be generous and gentle with our words, pay it forward, and all that. Fucking Saint Milly, who teaches city kids how to make art even though, with her and Jared’s family money, neither of them really needs to teach. But they’ve both taught all these years, to be “real people,” to show Mateo “values,” supposedly. He knows his bubbes and zaydes are paying for his college, but Jared and Milly still make him have those summer- and winter-break jobs so he learns these “values.”
“You’re impossible,” Milly finally tells him softly. Milly had turned forty this year, but the moment after Fenimore left the Christodora the first time meeting Milly, he grabbed Mateo’s arm and said, “Dude, your mom is a fucking babe.” All Mateo’s friends think that, the guys and the girls. The guys are in love with her and the girls either want to be her or are in love with her, too. That warm, kind, but gently droll Julia Roberts thing she exudes. That thing Auntie Kyla, who’s not really Mateo’s aunt but he’s always called her that, describes as “l’air de Milly.”
Mateo tilts his chin at Milly and grins and says, “It’s too bad you think I’m impossible since you gotta live with me.”
Milly laughs; she’s game. “No, my friend, I think that might be the reverse unless you can come up with the money for your own rent while you’re in school.”
“Don’t be a turd to your mother,” Fenimore says, grabbing Mateo and Keiko. “You work, Milly, we’ll make dinner.” Fenimore opens the bottle of red, pouring everyone a glass, and the three of them make a salad and pasta while Milly continues working, chatting here and there. At one point Mateo looks over at her: ebony hair up in that loose knot, cat-eye glasses perched on her nose, legs in skinny jeans crossed, bare foot bobbing, toenails painted glossy black. That permanently worried frown on her face she gets when she looks at art. Mateo allows himself a moment of affection for her. Then Milly glances upward and catches a soft look on his face. Taken aback, he sticks out his tongue at her and looks away—not so soon, though, that he doesn’t see her face break into a small, triumphant smile as she turns back to her laptop.
The wine relaxes Mateo. The dinner is good, informal, everyone passing around the baguette and tearing off pieces for themselves to mop up the spaghetti sauce. Keiko retells her Marina Abramović story; Milly plays down the fact that she and Marina have known each other for years, just saying, “It’s amazing she’s doing this, good for her.” Keiko and Fenimore babble and bitch about school and professors. Mateo fuzzes out on his wine, twirls his pasta, clears the table and loads the dishwasher when everyone’s done so folks can keep talking.
He comes back to the table with ice cream for everyone. “Thank you, sweetheart,” Milly says when he sets hers down in front of her—just one small scoop, all she’ll ever have, because it’s not like she stays looking the way she looks without putting some thought and discipline into it. Then after the dessert Keiko and Fenimore are getting up to leave.
“I’ll walk you guys down,” Mateo says.
“You have a crit in three days,” Milly says. “You should hit your room.”
“I’ll be right back!” Mateo whines.
Down on the street, he walks Keiko and Fenimore to the subway. Fenimore thoughtfully walks ahead a few paces while he and Keiko make out for a second on the way. “I love your mother,” Keiko says.
“Yeah, she’s okay.”
Mateo watches them disappear down the subway stairs. Such a warm night! The East Village is vibrating with warmth, everyone’s out. He lights a cigarette, takes a roundabout route back to the apartment. He thinks about what’s in his wallet and his stomach twists deliciously, his skin flushes.
And then, when Mateo’s walking past a row of tenements on Second Street, he sees him: Hector. The crazy gay guy whose dog, Sonya, bit him in the Christodora when he was a little kid, right before 9/11. It had been a horrible situation, with Jared-dad wanting to sue Hector but then Millimom’s mom, his bubbe Ava, imploring Jared not to, saying that Hector had fallen on hard times after the death of a lover. Instead, Jared had a lawyer send a letter to Hector saying that if Hector got rid of the dog, which was a menace to the entire Christodora, then Jared wouldn’t press charges over the bite. Jared had received no reply to the letter and was infuriated a week later to see Hector in the lobby with the dog, who seemed as keyed up as ever.
“Now I’m pressing charges,” Jared had said to Milly moments later.
“Well, you might want to wait,” Milly said. “Because Ardit just told me that Hector’s sold his unit and he’s moving out. He’s broke apparently; he hasn’t worked in two years now, and he can’t make the mortgage payments.”
Some of the angry color drained from Jared’s face. “Are you sure?” he asked Milly.
“Ardit told me today that Hector told him yesterday he’d closed on a sale.”
Jared was silent for a moment. “He and that dog can’t be out of here soon enough,” he finally said.
Everyone in the Christodora had known about Hector, once so famous and important in the AIDS movement but now a total meth addict. To the great relief of everyone in the building, he and the dog finally vacated and moved into a rent-stabilized basement dump a few blocks away. There, it was reported through the Christodora grapevine, he continued to smoke away, on a glass pipe, the money he’d made on the apartment sale. Through the first decade of the 2000s, he unraveled before the neighborhood’s eyes, from a handsome, muscular man in his early forties to a mumbling mess in his early to midfifties, screaming in the street at the dog he cooped up in that tiny basement apartment. Everyone on the block knew what went on there, who came and went.
And now Mateo is standing right in front of Hector as Hector yells at a new dog, another shepherd-pit mix, this one tan with black and white markings, straining on her leash to go into the street.
“Get the fuck back, animal,” Hector shouts. Mateo stands back and observes; people approaching Hector and the dog on the sidewalk abruptly cross the street, startled. Hector is bald and overtanned, with a three-day growth of black beard flecked with gray; a cigarette in one mouth; a dingy wifebeater over a shaven, sunken chest; cutoff denims too short for even the East Village; flip-flops with a rainbow-stripe thong; and a thick leather band around his wrist. He looks like a holy gay mess, thinks Mateo, some cracked-out Alphabet City version of Big Gay Al from South Park.
But Mateo can’t bring himself to cross the street to avoid him. He just keeps watching the spectacle with the big dog, mesmerized.
“Hector, right?” Mateo finally ventures from a safe dozen feet away.
Hector turns to him. “Brisa, sit the fuck down!” he yells at the dog, who ignores him, straining into the street, howling miserably. “What’s up, negro?” he asks Mateo.
“I’m Mateo. From the Christodora. You remember us, the Traums on the sixth floor?”
“Oh, shit!” Hector exclaims, breaking into a smile revealing a lost tooth on the far upper right. “Shit, you got big, man! I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
“I know, it’s true,” Mateo acknowledges. He wonders if Hector has any recollection of the biting inciden
t nine years ago with the prior dog. Gingerly, Mateo tries to pet this new dog, who strains away from him toward the street, as though she wants to gallop around the block a few times to release pent-up energy. “This is your new dog, right?”
“You got a light, negro?” he says, ignoring Mateo’s question.
“Huh?”
“You got a light? My cigarette went out.”
Oh, Mateo notes, it has. It’s just sitting there dead in his mouth.
“Yeah,” Mateo says, pulling out his lighter. “Sure.” He steps toward Hector to relight his cigarette, smelling what he once smelled when he went into a leather bar on Christopher Street for five minutes with friends in high school as a joke—it’s like BO, cigarettes, stale beer on the floor. “Fagfunk,” they called it upon leaving the bar, knowing they shouldn’t say that but cracking themselves up nonetheless.
“Gracias, negro,” Hector says. Mateo wonders if Hector knows he doesn’t speak Spanish—well, not very much. He thinks about his crit—he should get back to the Christodora, he tells himself. But he can’t pull himself away for some reason. Hector, though, appears indifferent to the encounter, contentedly puffing on his relit cigarette.
“That’s your new dog?” Mateo asks again.
“New?” Hector laughs. “Brisa’s not new. She’s a fucking middle-aged bitch.”
“But I mean—not the one you had in the old apartment, right?”
“In the—” He looks confused. “Oh, you mean the Christodora, right? No, no, yeah, that was Sonya. That poor bitch died a few years ago.”
He laughs, and Mateo laughs awkwardly with him. “Yeah, I remember Sonya,” Mateo says. “She was crazy.”
Hector smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “I loved that bitch.” He drags on his cigarette again. “Hey, wait a second,” Hector says. “You’re the little guy she fucking bit, right, and your white daddy wanted to sue me, right?”
Mateo feels himself flush in discomfort. “That was me,” he says. “The weekend right before 9/11.”
“Shit, negro!” Hector exclaims. “And now here you are. All grown up.” He cracks another grin.
“Here I am,” says Mateo. “I survived the dog bite!”
They both laugh now. Hector flicks his cigarette into the street. Mateo follows it into the gutter with his eyes, acutely aware that he should be getting on home but unable to pull himself away.
He points down toward the basement apartment. “You like your new place here?” he asks, fumbling to prolong the conversation.
“It’s a cave,” Hector says. “But it’s fine except for winter, when I go live in Palm Springs. In another cave.” Hector laughs jaggedly. “At least people leave me alone here and mind their own business.” Unceremoniously, he turns to go back inside. “Come on, baby,” he says to the dog, yanking the leash. “Está bien, negro,” he says to Mateo.
“Can I see it?” Mateo asks. Did I just ask that? he then asks himself.
Hector turns, looks at Mateo curiously, then shrugs. “Sure, come on in.”
Hector was right. It’s a fucking cave inside. A wreck. Assorted dog stuff everywhere, dog food scattered here and there on the floor. Piles of newspapers. A torn-up, scratched-up black leather couch with an old blanket thrown over it. A large-screen TV with the local news on, volume off. Construction boots, bomber jackets, baseball caps lying around. A picture on the TV table of Hector, probably twenty years ago, with some gay blond guy—one of those really gay beach pics, both of them in their tiny Speedos and wraparound glasses, arms around each other.
Hector goes to the fridge, pops open a chocolate-flavored Ensure, holds it up to Mateo. “You want one? I live on these things. They’re easier than eating.”
“No, thanks,” says Mateo. The dog’s humping his leg now and he’s absently massaging her head. Hector goes to the back bedroom, turns up some gay house music, comes back. Thump, thump, thump, thump-thump, thump, thump, thump. Some diva screaming, You got me feeling high, some bullshit like that. Mateo’s heart is pounding, his hands are shaking, and his legs are weak. He feels like he’s gone into some kind of fugue state. The crit seems a million miles away.
“Why’d you come in here, negro?” Hector asks him. He’s standing behind the kitchen counter, drinking his Ensure. “You wanna get high?”
Finally, Mateo thinks, he asked. “You wanna snort H with me?”
Hector’s eyes brighten. “You got H?” Mateo nods. “I haven’t done that in a while,” Hector says. “You wanna smoke it?”
Mateo doesn’t say anything. Smoking it—he hasn’t done that yet. He’s always considered that the next step into the beyond, the one that leads to needles, which makes you a full-time junkie and not just a functioning, recreational user. “I never did that,” he finally says.
“Hold on,” Hector says. He goes back to the bedroom, turns up the music, comes back with a carton of tin foil and a toilet-paper roll, draws the dingy sheet on the front room’s one window, which reveals people’s feet walking by on the sidewalk above. He sits down on the cracked, ripped-up couch, lights another menthol.
“Come sit,” he says. Mateo does, so close he’s deeply inhaling the fagfunk. He pulls the baggie out of his wallet, hands it to Hector. The dog, who’d actually been chilling out in a corner, bounds up and comes and sticks her huge head between the two of them like she wants to get high too.
“Sit the fuck down,” Hector yells, pushing her down. She goes down with a whimper, looking up at the two of them from the floor miserably, as though she’s left out. Hector tears off a piece of tin foil, then folds it and tears it again until it’s about five inches square, then taps some of the off-white powder onto its center. Mateo watches him, transfixed, while he does it. Why are you doing this? he asks himself. You are going to fuck up your crit, that much is for certain. Yet deep within, he is still, still, still just watching Hector, feeling utterly and inexplicably at home. He reaches down, strokes the dog’s head, which she rubs desperately against his arm. His foot is tapping nervously to the pounding house music.
Finally, Hector hands him the foil square and the cardboard roll. “Wait to inhale till you see smoke,” he says, snapping the lighter to life beneath the foil. As soon as Mateo sees blue smoke curl up off the foil, like a genie appearing from the ether, he sucks it up into the roll. And then, even faster than when he snorts it, his world melts and crumples, beautifully and softly, inside his stomach, the velvety crumple blooming through every vein of his body. He sinks leagues down and the world comes into focus from below, almost like looking up at the sun from under the water, everything quavering, tremulous, so kind and lovely.
He smiles at Hector. “Fuckin’ crazy gay guy,” he says, and cracks up. Hector laughs with him, his eyes popping open. After Hector sucks up his own plume of smoke, he leans toward Mateo with his mouthful of smoke, then he stops short, turns away, blows it out. They each take a few more hits, then Hector sets down the makeshift paraphernalia. They each lie back on the couch. The dog lumbers up on the couch and settles in between Mateo’s legs, grateful not to be turned away this time. The fucking house music pounds on. Somewhere inside his head, Mateo’s thinking, Shut off the fucking gay house music, but he doesn’t really care.
“Feels so good,” Mateo manages to say.
At first, Hector says nothing. Finally, that crazy mess is quiet! The H has cut his speed high. “So peaceful,” Hector finally says.
Mateo’s arm twitches deliciously, along with the exquisite, vaguely nauseous twitching in his belly. Eventually, the music goes off and it’s just the three of them, lying there, the now-dark room flickering with the changing shots of the silent TV. Mateo can hear voices, cars, an ice-cream truck out on the street. This is the perfect place, his body tells him. The H baggie is the hole in the air we crawl into to get there, like when Bugs Bunny, being chased, saws a circle out of the air around him and jumps into it, then plugs it
back up so that Elmer Fudd slams into it and lands on his ass. It’s just blue sky, it’s just the air, but there is a hole through it. Go through the hole in the sky.
Mateo turns, curls up on his side, wraps his arm around Hector’s leg, tucks his feet up to his butt. He’s engulfed in Hector’s fagfunk, so comforting. The dog feels good in the crook of his legs, her huge, steady breathing. He feels Hector gently stroke his pigtails.
“I remember this crazy fucking hair,” Hector says. “Fucking negrito in the building.”
Mateo cracks up in slow motion. “Negrito,” he echoes, laughing in a bath of delectable black ooze.
EIGHT
Parallel Tracking
(1989)
There was weak A/C in Reminiscence on MacDougal in the Village, so it had been hot in there all afternoon, and it was hot and muggy on the street, especially for early June. Milly came out of the shop where she was working the summer after her first year of college, pulled her hand back through her moist curls, rubbed her eyes, sighed. She walked a few feet, felt the heat and her own fatigue and, most of all, the suspension of everything, this odd pocket of six o’clock when the little street was silent, when cars and horns sounded miles away—and she surprised herself by sitting down on a stoop and hiking up her black eyelet gypsy skirt and pulling a cigarette out of her fringed brown suede bag. She lit it, then pulled a bandanna out of her bag to blot her face with, then tied the bandanna around her head to hold her hair back. She was thinking about Jared Traum and should she go back in the store and call him or wait till she got uptown? Or maybe they’d stay downtown so better she just go back in the store, where Alicia was working till it closed, and call him now, and hang out down here in some café . . .
She inhaled gratefully on the cigarette, an American Spirit, which was suddenly what everyone she knew smoked. Jared Traum, she thought. She’d known him since seventh grade, the school circuit uptown. Then they ended up at the same college, taking art classes together, that comfort of seeing someone on campus you knew from before, though, being from New York, that really wasn’t a rare thing; she was one of eight girls from her school who’d ended up at that particular college.