Vanishing Rooms

by Melvin Dixon

  Once I stole a ten-speed and spray-painted it over. I rode around, got Cuddles, and we rode double, Cuddles peddling and me on the seat, my hair blowing into spikes behind me and me holding Cuddles at the waist with my feet spread out from the double chain and derailer. He told me not to hold on so tight. Lou laughed his nuts off at us riding up to the garage on a stupid bike like that. He called us silly shitheads. I didn’t care since he’s mostly friendly with Maxie and thinks we just punks anyway. That’s when Cuddles tried to act tough. But when I told Lou how I stopped this kid in the park on the East Side, took the silver ten-speed right from under his ass, raced downtown, and spray-painted it red, he looked at me weird like he didn’t think I had the balls to do shit like that on the East Side. “You a mean dude,” he said. And I said, “Naw, just regular white trash.” I grinned all over myself and slapped his palm. Slapped Cuddles on the palm too.

  This time, walking up on the guys already at the garage and with me feeling the slow buzz of brew on a warm day, I don’t say much to Lou or to Maxie ’cause Cuddles is already talking big and laughing. Then I get the drift of some shit that really puts me out. “Man, what Lonny needs is some pussy,” Cuddles is saying. “He ain’t had none in so long he’s watching the boys on Christopher Street.” And Cuddles laughs, poking me in the side like I’m supposed to laugh too. But I’m hot in the face, red all over, itching to dance on somebody. But shit, Cuddles my man, or supposed to be. He can turn on you and get Maxie and Lou on his side. Like the time we was fussing and Cuddles jumps in, mocking me, saying, “One minute you talk like us, the next minute you don’t. You trying to fuck with us or something?” Then he jabbed his finger in my chest. “Either you one of us or you ain’t.” Now they’re all laughing like they got something else on me.

  “No shit. You mean Lonny’s sneaking after some faggot pussy?” says Lou.

  “Maybe Lonny just getting tired of the front door,” says Maxie. “He wants to come ’round the back.”

  “Can’t get it open no more, huh, Lonny?” says Lou.

  They make me feel like shit. I probably look like shit too. Damn Cuddles, I could kill him. Punch them all out. Why he have to goof on me like that when I’m enjoying my buzz? When these guys start loud-mouthing, no telling what they gonna do. “Naw, man,” I tell them, “The only thing I do with a back door is shut it with my fist.”

  “You into fist-fucking!” Maxie screams. I don’t even know what he’s talking about. Then he balls up his greasy hands and starts waving them all in my face like I’m gonna stand there and take it.

  My hands get tight, maybe tighter than his. What I got to lose? “Yeah—and if you don’t watch out, I’m a fist-fuck yo’ face!”

  “Whoaaa,” Maxie hollers, pretending to fall down, his mouth and eyes shooting open.

  “Whoaa,” says Cuddles, slippery as spit.

  Then Lou goes, “Aw man, we just messing with you. We know you cool.”

  “Yeah, he cool,” says Maxie. “When you got a shitty dick, you gotta keep cool, and clean.”

  That’s when I pull him off that locked bike where he thinks he’s king or something. Get him down tight between my legs, face red, and I’m about to beat his pink acne head to a pulp when Cuddles and Lou pull me back by the hair. I’d lose anyway. Maybe Cuddles and Lou know something I don’t know.

  “Cut the shit, man.”

  “Yeah, cut it.”

  I let him up. Maxie brushes himself off real calm like it was nothing but a punk like me getting out of hand. Being naughty. Shit. I push him away. “Next time you wanna give some lip,” I’m saying—and I grab my cock in a mound, point it at him—“wrap your lips around this.”

  “Whew,” says Lou. “You don’t need no taste that bad.”

  “Let’s get the fuck out of this garage,” says Cuddles. “Who’s buying this time?”

  We head for Key Foods and load up on two sixes. We get our regular bench in Abingdon Square which tries hard to be a park with a little grass and dirt, but it’s mostly concrete benches and jungle gyms. We sit and sip and sit and sip. Can’t wait for night to come, and I’m still trying to be cool. It ain’t always bad, drinking with the guys. About what I dig most these days, biding time till I can quit school. Be out on my own. More time to hang out. We get so plastered sometimes that night comes up on us with a scare and you wonder where the day went. Night is all right by me in the summer, but in October, man, you see things start dying all over the place. Not just red leaves circling down from the trees, but the cold whooshing in, cleaning the air of summer dog shit and roach spray. I can tell it’s gonna be an early winter. Long one too. Sooner than anyone expected, October came in, screaming, like an old lady afraid of burglary or rape. Like the skinny black dude who had the shit scared out of him when the guys stopped him and called him a nigger faggot to his face. Wish I coulda seen that.

  On the concrete bench next to me Lou says beer and night get him horny. His eyes snap at any piece of ass walking by. “Not any piece,” he says all loud and blustery. “Just the ass that squats to pee.” He starts stroking himself and gets up, saying he got to have some woman, and beer sprays from his mouth. Maxie says he needs some woman too. They say “woman” cause they won’t get anything calling it pussy. Cuddles stands next to Lou, holding him up then pushing him aside. “Forget about the woman,” Cuddles says. “I just want some snatch.” He poses like a hero out of some spy flick or war movie. I listen to them laughing and cackling, but I don’t say nothing about women or anything else.

  “Listen, if we all put our money together—”

  “What money,” I say. “I just blew what I had on the beer.”

  “See, I told you he was small,” says Maxie.

  “Shit.”

  Cuddles says he got ten dollars left. “And I got ten,” says Lou. “Twenty’s enough.”

  “Ain’t a bitch in town for that amount,” I say. Nobody answers. Every time we start cutting up on beer or herb or cycling around, somebody gets horny and we end up talking about bitches and chasing leg.

  “Drink up,” Cuddles tells me.

  “Let’s blow back to the garage,” says Lou. “Then the road to heaven.”

  We split up, riding double.

  “Hey, Lonny,” Maxie goes. “Don’t hold so tight.’’

  “Sorry.”

  I feel bad not having any money, but that’s all right with the guys. We don’t go to a house or a place with rooms. We ride uptown, along Broadway, near 79th Street where Cadillac headlights dim and slow to a cruising speed. Ten blocks further you see the bitches in miniskirts, all legs and face and not much chest, which is fine with me. Maxie pulls to a curb where Lou and Cuddles are leering at somebody. I stay at the bike while Maxie walks over to them. Suddenly she’s laughing out loud like they was the funniest thing she’s ever seen. She waves her hands away and goes back to her pose in the door of a bakery that’s closed for the night. Maxie goes ahead a half-block further and approaches another and another one until he comes running back to us.

  “Any go?” Lou asks for all of us. Me included.

  “Yeah, some bitch around the corner at ninety-first. You guys down?”

  “Yeah,” Cuddles says and looks at me. I say yeah, too.

  We go on up to 91st Street and turn east between Broadway and Amsterdam. We stop at the first abandoned building which is really near Columbus. The woman—I’ll say “woman” too this time—has dyed blond hair that looks like straw under the street lamp. She pulls at her skirt and pops gum in her mouth. “Hurry up now,” she says. “I ain’t got all night. For this little shit money, I’m doing you a favor. Be glad I got the real money early. Roscoe be on my ass if he finds out. Be on all your asses, too.”

  She enters the dim hallway and Maxie and Lou follow her up to the first floor. I wait with Cuddles against the parked cycles. They’re gone only about five minutes when she comes out again. “Anybody got a jacket? It’s damn cold in there.”

  Cuddles hands over his jacket. Up c
lose now I see she’s not much older than me, maybe younger. I wonder why she’s doing this. I want to say something to her but I don’t. Besides, what can I say? I’m here. Cuddles winks at me and points to her swaying ass as she goes back inside. We wait. When our turn comes Maxie and Lou watch the bikes. Cuddles goes first. He doesn’t take off his pants all the way, just unzips his fly and plows in. He’s fast. Faster than I’ll ever be. Maybe. It’s already my turn. Her face turns up to me from the floor, her eyes tiny like they’re holding something in. “What’s the matter? You scared?”

  I don’t say anything. I make my eyes tiny, like hers.

  “If you don’t come on, you lose. Ain’t no discounts, now.” And she laughs. Cuddles laughs, too. I climb on top, my clothes tight at the waist. I feel around her titties and she turns her tiny eyes away from me, arching her back. “Stop fumbling with my chest. Ain’t nothing there.” I want to say I like it like that, but I don’t say nothing. This close I can see her teeth ain’t clean.

  Cuddles moves toward the door, keeping a look out. I try to say something, but she starts moving her hips around and my dick pops out of my pants. The tightness is gone. I’m all in her now and working, watching her face, her head shaded by the denim jacket and her tiny eyes doing nothing until they open up on me doing what I’m doing.

  Cuddles comes over and just stands there like I’m taking too much time. Shit, he got his. I’m getting mine. He watches me. I try to say something, anything. His eyes hold me. Her eyes pinch tiny again, and I feel the pull way down between my legs. I get it in my throat and say, “You see me, Cuddles?” And he says, “Yeah man.” The girl breathes deeply, but she don’t say nothing. It’s just me and Cuddles. Me and him with words. “You see me getting this pussy?”

  “Yeah, I see you, man.”

  “I’m getting it. I’m getting it, Cuddles.” And my head goes light all of a sudden as if a weight was easing off me and going her way, maybe his. My hands grip the ends of the jacket like they’re the spokes of a wheel turning me. My head circles faster than my body or her head below mine as I push my face against the cloth and away from her tiny eyes and straw hair. I feel Cuddles’ eyes on me again, then her eyes on me. The smell of denim and armpits make me tingle all over and tingle again until my whole body heaves and pulls. The jacket lets go the smell of grease and body all in my face, and I can’t do nothing but let go myself The bitch had nothing to do with it. Riding on empty, I ease up. She smooths her skirt back into place. I don’t say nothing and she don’t say nothing. We walk outside.

  Maxie hands her the twenty dollars. She looks like she could cast a spell. “You better be glad Roscoe ain’t around. He’d be oh all your asses for this lousy twenty bucks.”

  We rev up for the ride downtown. Cuddles brushes off his jacket and climbs behind Lou at the handlebars. “I was just shitting you, Lonny, about that faggot stuff. You cool, man. I seen you. You cool.”

  “I know,” I tell him. “I know I’m cool.” I slap him on the back. I climb up on Maxie’s bike. I ain’t grabbing tight this time. In a minute we’re gone.

  Jesse

  WHAT WAS I DOING EIGHTY BLOCKS UPTOWN with this woman whose eyes were windows on me? How did I get here? Took the A train to 59th Street, changed to the Broadway #1 local, got out at 86th Street, and walked two blocks south, two blocks west. Watched for traffic leaving the West Side Highway and came this close to jumping into the filthy Hudson.

  Inside, Rooms asked me, “You were lovers for a long time?” She joined me on the couch. It was her couch, her apartment.

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t imagine what it was like.”

  “Neither can I, sometimes,” I said. “No, that’s not true.” “I didn’t think so,” she said.

  I left the couch and paced the floor, then touched the windows. The walls were full of posters of dancers and company tours. Metro and I never got around to decorating our walls. They stayed bare and white.

  “You want to talk about it?” said Rooms, following me with her eyes. I went back to the couch and took her hands, feeling the grains of her knuckles as I spoke.

  I had signed the lease on the apartment on West 4th Street a few weeks before Metro and I finished college. It was a three-room walk-up close to the IND fines at 14th Street and 7th Avenue where the 1, 2, and 3 trains run. I had studied the subway map, memorized the numbers and color codes of the train routes. Metro had to visit his family and arrived in Manhattan two weeks after I moved in. He figured out the routes for the BMT, the IRT, and the IND, the bus lines and the shuttle system faster than I did. He had been to Paris where they have a better network, they say.

  This was our first year living together. The rooms were small but had four windows and two exposures. I could watch the sun rise and set. Our bedroom was large enough for only the bed and a tiny desk where Metro wrote when he worked at home. “You couldn’t find anything larger?” he once asked.

  “Nothing we could afford,” I said. My nerves danced as he fretted from one small room to the other, the kitchen-dining-living room, the bedroom-study, hall, bathroom, closet, and back again. Metro was always moving. He wouldn’t sit still, even to talk about moving from these rooms to somewhere else. Maybe he should have been the dancer and I the news reporter. But he had a journalist’s eyes and wanted to take in everything, be everywhere. Just like that day at college when our eyes first met at Clarkson Hall. Now that he’s gone, I can’t help wondering what he really saw, or what I saw. All I remember is that our eyes were hungry.

  That cold February morning made the sun stand still. I was up at dawn. It was February 21, the day we declared Malcolm X Day. Since the college wouldn’t cancel classes to memorialize Malcolm’s death, we black students would. From the top story of Clarkson Hall, the main building at Wesman University, hung a large bed sheet with the words, “Malcolm, Malcolm” streaked in black spray paint, flapping against the frost. It was a sign of our presence at the university and a measure, so we thought, of our strength.

  Desks, chairs, and portable blackboards were stacked as barricades at the front and back entrances. We were more afraid of the jock fraternity next door than the police. By eight o’clock, when the first classes were to be held, over a hundred of us had filed into the building, filling the halls and foyer and front windows on every floor. I took up a post on the second floor. From the outside the building must have looked totally occupied. At least, that was the impression we wanted to give, I saw white students and a few blacks gathered outside; some paused and just walked away, bewildered. Some I knew from dance class, the dormitory, the theater. Many were simply confused, astounded perhaps that the building had been taken and that black students were now in charge. We were honoring a fallen hero, a symbol of something we had but didn’t quite have, and needed to have. Some radical white students gathered with picket signs, expressing their support. By noon more students had congregated outside than there were inside. Someone quickly arranged an impromptu rally. A few student writers read from their poetry. One of the organizers asked me to dance something “political,” but I declined, remembering his look of disdain when I first said I was studying to be a dancer, not a doctor or lawyer like the rest of them. From my window post in the empty classroom I looked out and did nothing more than watch.

  What I saw scared me. It was my history professor, Robert James Woods, hurrying angrily along the front of Clarkson. He was determined to hold his class elsewhere. He stopped at the barricade, looked up at all the windows. I saw him, but he looked at me without any hint of recognition. And I always sat in the front row of his class. We must all have looked like mold on brick to him. He turned away disgusted. I remained at the window, stunned. Then I saw someone else. Thick, wavy brown hair, angular forehead and chin, horn-rimmed glasses, stubby fingers clutching a reporter’s steno pad. Eyes like reaching hands. When he looked straight at me, I felt pulled into his whole face. His stare made me feel weightless, light, angled toward him on wings suddenly fluttering fro
m inside me and begging for air. I wanted then to get under his skin, travel at breakneck speed through his veins and right to his heart. But there I was, locked inside the building, barricaded away on the second floor. So I waved to him slowly, with all the fingers of one hand. He nodded and waved back. His hands were much larger than I thought.

  I couldn’t wait for the demonstration to end. Malcolm X was of little help, and students kept playing records of his speeches that echoed through the halls. I moved from window to window, from one empty classroom to another. The reporter was moving too. I watched as he spoke to the picketing students and the worried administrators while jotting notes on his pad. And I watched him follow me as I moved. When we found ourselves staring again, I knew we would meet somehow on the outside. The takeover suddenly became the dullest event of the day. My hands felt empty with nothing to touch.

  When at last it was time to leave Clarkson, after hours of negotiations between the administration and leaders of the Black Student Union, after flashing bulbs and whirring television news cameras, we were told to keep quiet about our actions, especially the planning, but what did I know or remember by then? The barricades were lifted. Light and air rushed into the crowded hallway. We formed a line in threes, males on the outside, women in the middle for protection. Then silently, just as night was coming on, we left the building.

  Reporters gathered close about us, but we kept marching away from Clarkson and toward the Nkrumah African-American Center. Our silence was really a prayer for safety. None of us wanted to be expelled or disciplined. Besides, most of us were on scholarships. My parents would have killed me if they had found out what I had done. Cameras clicked. Our feet crunched the hard, leftover snow. I tried not to look for the wavy brown hair or the horn-rimmed glasses, but there he was, following along my row. I knew he would ask me something. My eyes begged him to. I wanted to talk, but not about Malcolm X or the demonstration. I wanted to talk about him and me, about what I saw from the second-story window and he from the snowcapped street.