He found the empty bed in the dark and buried himself in it. He could not cry. He hated himself too much to feel pity. The empty darkness of this bed and room was where he belonged. Where no one could tell him lies he was tempted to believe. Where there was nothing to break his focus on the absence that was the real center of his life.
4
THEY MET ON THE train between Philadelphia and New York.
Michael Sousza transferred to Columbia his sophomore year, after a year at Haverford College outside Philadelphia. His grades were good, and Michael had wanted to go to Columbia all along, but his father distrusted New York City and insisted Michael spend his first year away from home in a small, protected place. Mr. Sousza was a self-made man, a second-generation Czech who had worked his way up from carpenter to contractor. He was proud he had enough money to send his youngest, brightest son to a good school. He had hoped his son would stay at Haverford once he was there, but gave in when Michael’s heart remained set on Columbia.
Perhaps he had anticipated it too long, but Michael was miserable his first semester in New York. Surrounded by cliques and circles formed the year before, neither the preppie nor New York Jew that everyone else seemed to be, Michael felt utterly alone. The city intimidated him. He did not have the spending money that would’ve enabled him to go out with the few people he did meet. He spent his evenings in the library or lab and his grades remained good, but he was so unhappy he could not remember why he had burned to live in New York City. He stood outside Earl Hall one damp night in October when there was a gay dance inside, listening to the disco music thumping through the dripping trees, and decided he wasn’t so lonely he had to resort to that.
He went down to Haverford one weekend in November to visit friends from freshman year, only to find they weren’t as friendly as he remembered them. It was just as well. He couldn’t transfer back there without giving his father the terrible satisfaction of being right again. Michael caught the train back late Sunday night. The train was packed and he walked all the way to the smoking car before he found an empty seat. An older man reluctantly lifted his Walkman and nylon windbreaker from the seat beside him when Michael approached. Not until Michael had put his bag in the overhead rack and settled in did he bother to look at the man. He instantly felt the man was gay. He dressed gay, wearing black jeans and a white T-shirt although he looked like he was at least thirty. (Clarence, in fact, was thirty-five.) His mustache looked gay: neatly trimmed hairs bordering his mouth. Michael knew what they did with their mouths. Michael was very nervous, terrified the man might try something.
But the man didn’t look at Michael, not even at Michael’s knees. The Walkman turned in his lap and his shaggy head was wired with the headset. He closed his eyes like someone in church while he listened to the music in his skull. All Michael heard was a tinny orchestra of ants.
Michael decided to be relieved the man was occupied. He took out his chemistry notebook and tried to forget him, although that was difficult with the man leaking music. The long passenger car shuddered once, then seemed to float in space, the darkness outside turning the windows into long black mirrors.
The Walkman clicked to a stop. Michael glanced over while the man flipped the cassette. He assumed it would be disco, but the yellow label on the cassette read: “Humperdinck, Highlights from Hansel and Gretel” The man pressed a button and disappeared into his music again.
Michael listened more closely. That was a children’s story, but this sounded like opera. Michael was ashamed of how little he knew about music, how working-class he really was, like his family. But knowing the man listened to something called Hansel and Gretel changed him in Michael’s eyes. It made him seem less gay, less intimidating. Maybe he taught elementary school. He didn’t have the cool, predatory look of the gay men Michael saw on the street, but looked rather mild and benevolent, despite the mustache. He had a big cowlike jaw, thin lips, and long, sensitive eyelids. The T-shirt wasn’t pumped up with muscles, and there was a slight cushion of tummy above his belt. His eyelids quivered and his nostrils dilated, as if he were deeply moved by something.
Then his eyes opened. “Oh!” He looked at Michael and pulled the plugs out of his ears; there was a whistle of music. “Do I have this too loud? I’m terribly sorry.”
“Uh, no. Not really. Not at all.” Michael had looked too much, forgetting the music didn’t make him as invisible as he felt. He didn’t want the man to think he’d been looking at him, so he added, “Hansel and Gretel, isn’t it?”
“Huh? Oh. Yes!” said the man, surprised by Michael’s interest. “Wonderful piece of music. Grossly underrated.” He spoke slowly at first, lazily savoring his words yet also shy about them. “Most people think it’s only a children’s opera, but…” He shrugged sheepishly, as if afraid Michael might disagree with him. “Anyway, it’s wonderful music for train trips.”
“You don’t say.”
“Absolutely. Like this part here. In the finale.” The man eagerly fast-forwarded the tape and listened to it. “Just a sec. The chorus of the gingerbread children,” he explained. “Where they ask Gretel to touch their eyes and bring them back to life. Ah. Here it is.” The man took his headset and, before Michael could stop him, slipped the whole thing over Michael’s head, his fingers brushing Michael’s ears. It was much too intimate. The cord remained wrapped once around the man’s neck. “Okay. Now listen to this, and slowly turn your head around while you listen.”
Michael had no choice except to seat the plugs in his ears and nod. The music came on, filling his head with a slow, sweet current. Then there were children singing, softly, dreamily, the orchestra carrying them along in their trance as if they all floated on their backs in a river. Without knowing what he was supposed to listen for, Michael slowly turned his head as the man instructed, until he saw the skyline of a small city float forward outside in the darkness, then the man looking straight at him.
He was smiling at Michael, his eyes wide open and expectant.
Michael smiled back at him.
The Walkman was turned off and the protective shell of music vanished, along with Michael’s smile. The dreary rumble of wheels and the hiss of the ventilators returned.
“Yes?” said the man, taking the headset Michael passed back to him. “It makes even Amtrak interesting. I feel I’m being rude when I use these things, and it’s not good the way they turn everything around you into a movie. But it’s interesting. The way the music brings out rhythms in things you wouldn’t notice otherwise.”
“Very interesting,” said Michael.
“It’s even better with Poulenc, whose music always makes me think of scores for silent movies, only they’re movies that existed only in his head. Do you like Poulenc? Or Pou-lank, however it’s pronounced?”
“I’m not familiar with him. I don’t know much classical music,” Michael admitted. “I’m not very strong on culture.”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t really think of it as culture,” the man said with a trace of embarrassment. “It’s just stuff I happen to like.” He actually did talk about music as if it were an innocent passion, with no social clout attached to it, no desire to impress Michael with his sophistication. Which was why Michael had been able to confess his ignorance so easily. “What kind of music do you like?”
“Music doesn’t really interest me.”
“Ah.” The man fumbled with the jacket gathered in his lap and pulled out a pack of Winstons. “Cigarette?” he offered.
Michael was tempted to take one, just to be friendly, so he rebelled against his desire to be friendly and said, “Don’t you know smoking’s bad for you?”
“Yeah. I know I shouldn’t, but—” The man shrugged guiltily, stuck a cigarette in his mouth, and lit it.
Someone who was trying to pick you up would respect your wishes, wouldn’t he? Michael decided the man wasn’t interested in him. He was annoyed by the thick smoke.
The man sat and said nothing while he smoked, apparently
thinking about someone or something else. But his headset remained around his neck like a collar. He didn’t go back to his music, which would’ve declared their encounter over.
“You visiting New York?” Michael asked. He assumed the man lived elsewhere. He had a faint Southern slur, and no New Yorker would be as openly enthusiastic about anything as this man was about music.
“I live in New York. Just going home after a weekend in D.C. And you?”
Michael explained he was a student at Columbia and the man asked what that was like. They talked about living in New York. The man was from Danville, Virginia, had lived in New York twelve years, worked in a midtown film lab, and lived on the Upper West Side. He never mentioned being gay, but he never mentioned a wife or girlfriend either.
The man seemed to grow bored with their talk, because he suddenly asked, “Seen any good movies lately?” always a sure sign conversation was running down. Michael mentioned a couple of recent titles—bored and lonely, he had seen more movies his first months in New York than he’d seen all year at Haverford. So they talked about movies. Actually, the man did most of the talking, having seen more movies than Michael knew existed, becoming as bashfully animated over movies as he’d been with music. He went on at length about one in particular, a foreign film he said Michael must see the next time it played at a revival house. It was called The Conformist, and although the man never made clear what its story was, he went into great detail about its use of camera movement and music. He did not talk about movies like a normal person; Michael was never conscious of anything but the story and how he felt afterward.
They talked movies until the illuminated tip of the Empire State Building slid along the dark house-covered ridge in New Jersey and the train plunged into a tunnel. Beneath the Hudson River, people began to collect their things. Michael collected his thoughts, wondering why he was so nervous that this meeting was ending when he should be pleased to be back in New York, where he could be miserable without being confused. He stood up to get his bag and let the man get out.
“You know,” said the man, remaining in his seat, “I just remembered. They’re showing that movie I was telling you about. Next week at the Thalia. I see it every time it’s shown. If you like, we could see it together.”
“Yes!” said Michael. “I mean, it depends. When is it?”
The man didn’t know, but offered to give Michael his telephone number so they could arrange something. Michael passed the man his notebook, then a pen, then took them back when the man finished. Michael couldn’t remember the number of the pay phone in his dorm, but the man didn’t ask for it. The train had come to a stop, and people swept Michael down the aisle before he could say more to the man than goodbye. Not until he was upstairs in the concourse did Michael have a chance to look at his notebook before slipping it into his bag. Neatly written across the top of a page covered with chemical equations was a number that looked like just another equation, except there was a name beside it: Clarence Laird.
(The next day, talking to a friend on the telephone, Clarence moaned, “I’m getting old, Ben. I tried to set up a date with a kid I met on the way back from meeting that would-be producer in Washington. I’m turning into a god-damn chickenhawk, Ben! Thank God, I’ll never hear from this kid. I don’t even know if he’s gay, and I’ll bet he doesn’t know either.” Ben assured him the younger generation were quicker about these things than they had been.)
Michael sometimes thought about naked men, but he didn’t think that made him gay. Such homosexual fantasies were a symptom of loneliness, he believed. He’d been having these thoughts since high school, but he’d been lonely since high school. And he had these thoughts only when he was alone. Sometimes particular guys, sometimes just any guy, but he never thought of anyone that way when he was with him, only when he was by himself. There had been a senior dorm counselor at Haverford whom Michael needed to see at least once each day, so he wouldn’t think about him naked. In the beginning there’d been naked women too, but it had been nothing but men since he was sixteen. What proved to Michael he wasn’t gay was his discomfort with gay men. There were openly gay students at Columbia, unlike Haverford, and Michael never thought about them the way he thought about other guys. In fact, the mere presence of an obvious homosexual made Michael forget he ever had such thoughts or, if he remembered, assured him his thoughts had nothing to do with their behavior. It was as though he could have his fantasies only when they were private, completely original, and incapable of being shared. Michael used the word gay not for liberal reasons but because queer and even homo might apply to his fantasies. Gay suggested an identity as solid and apart from him as black, an identity now shored up by rumors of a disease that struck only gays. Michael never worried about the disease because he wasn’t gay.
The night he returned from Philadelphia and all the next day, Michael thought about the man on the train. Not naked, however. He was too nervous for that. He thought about not calling the man, but things left unfinished were harder to forget. He considered throwing away the man’s telephone number, but it was written on an important page of notes and Michael hated to mar his notebook by tearing off a corner of paper. And he actually wanted to see this Clarence Laird again. The man was a nice guy, could talk to someone younger without condescension, knew things Michael felt he should learn—cultural things. So what if the man were gay? So what if he made a pass? If he made a pass, if he actually made Michael do things with him, it might cure Michael for good of his morbid thoughts. There had been black moods when Michael worried himself with the idea he had come to New York mainly to find someone to do that to him. Michael was only nineteen. The discovery that his imagination and emotions seemed to have a life of their own sometimes struck him as evidence of insanity.
He telephoned Clarence on Monday night, gave his name—he had never mentioned it on the train—and said he wanted to see that movie, whose title he had forgotten. It was being shown the following Sunday, and Michael spent the rest of the week changing his mind and making it up again until the overcast afternoon when he walked twenty blocks down Broadway to the Thalia.
(“Much to my surprise,” Clarence told Ben over the phone, “Amtrak Junior called. I think he’s the type who expects to be seduced, so he won’t feel responsible. But I don’t have the energy to play that game these days, not with so much else on my mind. Or the interest. He’s way too young. Well, I’m not counting on anything. I was going to the movie anyway.”)
The man was waiting for Michael beneath a shabby, small-town movie marquee. Michael was surprised the man was the same height as he was. He’d imagined him to be taller, just because he was older, but they’d been sitting the whole time they met. The man looked disappointingly normal and unphysical, like a college teacher, nothing like the dangerously physical presence Michael had been imagining all week. He had not dressed up for their meeting but must have shaved, because there was still a dab of shaving cream on his left earlobe, like a pearl earring. Exchanging hellos and pleasantries outside the theater, Michael had to fight an impulse to reach out and wipe the man’s ear.
“Seeing this with someone who’s seeing it for the first time is almost as good as seeing it for the first time yourself,” said the man as they stepped inside and sat in the smoking section. He talked about nothing but the movie, telling Michael about the director, how young the director had been when he made it, warning Michael that the movie had an extremely tricky flashback structure.
“I’m sure I’ll be able to handle it,” Michael said.
The movie began, and Michael was surprised the man had not warned him it had subtitles. He tried to get used to that, tried to concentrate on the movie, but although it seemed as beautiful as the man said it was—the camera moving in weird, noticeable ways—things flashbacked all over the place and Michael became lost, uninvolved enough to be conscious of the man’s knee beside his. Their knees brushed, once. Nevertheless, the man looked as utterly absorbed in the movie as he’d
been in Hansel and Gretel on the train. It was as though they were still on the train, only now the scenery was in front of them.
Ladies with parasols looked on while a gang of boys humiliated a pale boy in a sailor outfit, jeering at him and pulling his pants down. Michael responded to that. Then the boy went off with a uniformed chauffeur, who showed sympathy for the boy, took him to an enormous deserted mansion, lured him to his quarters, and threw him on the bed. This was why the man had lured him here, Michael decided. He watched excitedly. The boy seemed to want something to happen. He ran his hands through the man’s shoulder-length hair. The movie flashbacked somewhere else, and when it got back to the boy and chauffeur, something must have already happened, because the boy grabbed the pistol the chauffeur had shown him and started firing wildly around the room, killing the chauffeur, then fleeing.
The movie settled down and became easier to follow—a secret agent and his wife in Paris—but Michael watched it in a daze, still haunted by the boy and the chauffeur, until the final scene, when a dark curly-haired young man lay bare-bottomed on a bed in an alley, watched by the secret agent through iron bars.
When the lights came up, the man was sunk back in his chair and grinning at the ceiling. “It never ceases to amaze me,” the man murmured. “And I’ve seen it at least twenty times. You want to come back to earth with a drink somewhere?”
Michael nodded and followed the man out to the street, wondering if they’d seen the same movie. It had affected Michael, but more like a bad dream than a movie, a disturbing dream that might have seemed sexual except that nothing like intercourse had been involved. He pushed aside his confused excitement by dwelling on questions of fact: had the man behind bars already had sex with the naked guy or was he only considering it?
“Anywhere you’d like to go?” the man asked outside. “There’s a bar nearby, or, if you’d just like beer, my apartment’s only a few blocks from here.”
In Memory of Angel Clare Page 6
