by Gary Indiana
She should grow up, I said, why don’t you tell her you’re going out with me? At this stage, he said, that would hurt her terribly, and I’ve already done enough damage to her, she’s still in love with me, can’t you understand, she doesn’t have any choice, she’s under a compulsion, she’d follow me around like a dog in the streets if she didn’t have to work every day.
Well, look, I said, that’s all well and good, but enough’s enough, and also, I said, I find it pretty odd that you’ve gone on for weeks and weeks telling me how malign Gloria is, how she’s given you all kinds of grief, and now you seem to be getting indignant because I don’t feel much sympathy for her. I’m insecure enough without that cunt hanging around.
He said, It’s tacky and mean to call her a cunt, you don’t even know her.
No, I screamed, and I don’t want to know her, either.
Well, he said, I’d like to introduce you two sometime, she read some stories you wrote and said she thought they were quite good.
I don’t give a shit what Gloria thinks about my stories, I said, is she some sort of literary critic suddenly, besides being an interfering cunt?
Is the reason you’re calling her a cunt, he said, now his voice shot up though he didn’t rise from the desk, because you’re jealous she had my dick? That isn’t worthy of you, that’s mean-spirited and shitty, she’s a nice girl, she wants to be a writer in fact, it’s so unfair to hate her just because she had something you didn’t, I mean, you don’t have to worry, she’s never getting it again, and I told her so.
It must be something pretty special, I said, since you seem to get everything you want with it.
He laid the knife down and said, That’s what you really think of me, isn’t it. I said: I don’t know what I think. You confuse me, I said. Everything you do confuses me and makes me feel crazy. Maybe so, Gregory said, but if you didn’t think about me every second you wouldn’t imagine me doing all sorts of things behind your back. There’s nothing going on between me and anybody else, he said. And anyway, he went on, even if there were, what rights do you have, what claims do you have over me? I don’t ask you, he said, if you fuck other people, and frankly, he went on, lighting a cigarette, I think it might be healthy if you did.
I said, You’re saying it wouldn’t bother you if I were sleeping with somebody. He said of course it wouldn’t bother him because he didn’t expect me to deny myself anything on his account. Oh, for Christ’s sake, I said, I suppose by the same token you’d sleep with anybody else if you felt like it.
Gregory’s voice thinned to a cool, crackling undertone. How many times, he exhaled, how many different ways, do I have to tell you I don’t want to sleep with anybody?
Then why are we together like this, I demanded, fooling around with each other and talking on the phone as if we had this intense relationship? Why do you act like you’re my boyfriend? Is this how you are with other people?
I’m not the way I am with you with anybody else because I love you, Gregory said, though you don’t seem able to accept that idea. There’s nothing I’d like better in the world than to be able to fuck you into a coma so you wouldn’t feel so deprived all the time. But I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t force myself to, either.
Why can’t you? I said. Am I that repulsive to you?
Gregory winced. He crushed out his cigarette and put his hands over his face. He said, It’s got nothing to do with you, and I’m running out of ways to tell you it’s got nothing to do with you, you keep insisting like a child, how can a person as smart as you fail to understand something so simple?
Because, I said, it’s not simple. He said anyone except me would think it was. I said I knew he wasn’t impotent. He said: I never said I was. He said: I prefer not to. He said: Haven’t you read Bartleby the Scrivener?
In other words, I said, this is all about your free will.
Gregory said, I’d like to see you happy. Obviously I can’t make you happy if you define happiness as getting my cock up your asshole. Don’t be vulgar, I said, in any case I’m not expecting to be happy. Well, he said, I am. I’m older than you, I told him. He said, That doesn’t mean anything. I said yes it did. He said, What, for example. I said, Things about death, what you want the rest of your life to be like. Gregory sneered. I suppose, he said, you’re referring to some greater awareness I wouldn’t have acquired from shooting smack for two years. I said that some things don’t happen until you physically age, that I hadn’t exactly been a drug virgin in my twenties either, that the thing about drugs is you don’t really learn anything from taking them.
You were never an addict, Gregory said. Since you were able to stop using horse, I said, I assume you never were, either. That’s a creepy, mean thing to say, he told me, it took me more than a year to get clean. I stole money, I sold my ass, guys paid me to jerk off in their faces, he said, do you want me to list all the degrading shit I did before I reached something vaguely resembling sanity?
I suddenly felt ashamed and in the wrong; and I felt as if I’d become trapped in the mix of some top 40 song about the pain of love. I said: I’m sorry. I’ve been alone a long time. It’s hard to trust situations like this.
But, he said, that’s because you’re not giving this a chance to develop slowly on its own time so we can have something that’s worth it. Look, he said. If you really want that, I’ll take my clothes off right now and dick you right there on the futon and then you can go home and forget all about me.
That isn’t how I want things, I said, I want to make love with you.
And I can’t, he said, do you really want me to when I don’t want to? You decide. I can get it up for you. Sure, no problem, tell me which hole you want me to put it in and how long you want me to keep it there, God knows I’ve gone through the motions enough before, I’m sure I can do it again.
Look, I said, I didn’t come over here to get laid, I just want to be with you. I’m sorry I said that shit about Gloria, it’s not that I’m jealous. If I dislike her it’s because everything you’ve told me made me think she was hurting you and adding to your problems.
I know, he said, I know, that’s the thing, you can blow off at me as much as you like and I’ll just wait quietly until you’re finished. The real you doesn’t want to get mad at me, in fact the real you hates the other you when that happens, because the real you is terrified of losing me. But see, I can tell those two people inside you apart. The other you can’t hurt me because it’s not the real you.
He crosses the room, plants his hands on my shoulders, squeezes me. He touches me: there. I say: Why are you touching me? He says: I want you to feel good. I say: I feel good but now I feel manipulated. He steps away, back to the desk, sighs, sits down. He rolls his chair back. He smiles the smile he knows is irresistible. Anger-proof.
I refuse to fight with you, he says. That’s very clever, I tell him, because I have the feeling I’d win. But I smile and show him he can always melt me down between my legs and this will always draw a bead on anything he doesn’t want to deal with.
Oh ho ho, he laughs, you can’t win with me, haven’t you figured that out yet? I suppose, I answer, if I’ve learned anything from this relationship, it’s that.
Yup. You’ll never get the upper hand.
Everything’s going to be on your terms.
That’s the way it’s got to be right now.
Its nothing to brag about, really.
Come off it. Don’t. You should actually feel good about it, because basically you don’t want the upper hand. That would make it boring. Now come on. Come here.
I stepped over and stood next to his chair.
Look, he said, your hands are shaking. Relax. You know what I’d like? Kiss my . . . collar. Not my neck, honey, my collar. Gregory doesn’t want his skin touched today, just the collar. Twenty kisses. One, two, three, four . . . kiss my sleeve, all the way down, down, kiss just along there, down to the cuff, twenty kisses . . . kiss that button. Oooh, that feels good. That’s so
nice. Now the belt. Stay away from the buckle area, you can only kiss the side there, where the loop is, kiss the loop. Now the knee, just the left knee, kiss it thirty times . . . very nice, sweetie, real nice. Oh, all right, do the other knee too. You know something, you’re an angel, you’re all warm and soft like an angel. Your hair feels like an angel’s hair, it’s so smooth . . . kiss the leg of my pants, all the way down, now kiss my socks, kiss all around my feet, kiss under the toes, twenty kisses . . . do my insteps, that’s so beautiful, you’re really my slave, aren’t you, it’s funny because, do the heels now, thirty kisses each heel, if people only knew you’re a complete slave to me, now around, up to the ankles, people would be so surprised, I bet people think I’m your dumb little trick. Lick with your tongue, sugar, taste the whole sock, go ahead, put my toes in your mouth. People think I’m your little dog, but you’re my little slave. Wouldn’t Bruno freak if he saw you right now, like that. You’re an angel slave. You’re the most beautiful angelic slave I’ve ever had.
An hour later, tramping again through the cold streets, the sun blotted now by cloud cover, walking beside him but feeling, in the immense pauses between his bursts of chatter, as if I’m several feet behind him, like a Japanese bride. He walks even faster than me, races along like a keyed-up robot toy. Houston to Broadway, Eighth Street to Sixth Avenue, over to Seventh Avenue, up Seventh into the twenties, then even further west, near the river, breath steaming in the chill. People like blurred rag heaps, snatches of skin. The air has the bluish pall that sets off shop lights like clusters of stage jewelry. The first trickles of snow drift listlessly down, bits of leftover confetti, melting to brownish muck as they kiss the sidewalk. We’re both powdered with clingy white specks.
This is quite a distance, really.
Not far, he says.
My boots soak up slush. He says it’s only a few more blocks, but we’re already in the low thirties. The wind off the Hudson gnaws through my serge jacket and nibbles under my scarf. Gregory shakes. Neither one of us has thought to wear gloves, or a hat. I notice, as if for the first time, Gregory’s emphatically tapered, mutton-chop sideburns, extending to an inch or so above his jawline on either side. I notice the oddity of this facial topiary, cocky and sleazily suggestive. Gregory’s hair is blacker than onyx, and these paddle-shaped whiskers belong on a gigolo in some Nebraskan microcity. Like the ring in his nose, the side-burns go with the look of a man who wants to attract women, women of a certain type, drunk and not very bright women in cocktail lounges.
In the vast, musty Salvation Army third floor where I wait for Gregory to zip through rack after rack of stale-smelling garments, I understand what oppresses me: the way he presents himself courts sexual attention from the widest possible constituency, male and female. Bluntly, brutally. He flips through dozens of stained, frayed, torn, superannuated shirts, trousers, vests and neckties, exclaiming at choice monstrosities. The place is like a penitentiary for old clothes, ugly and dust-bound as a welfare office. Yes, I think, it’s the style, the look: it makes being attracted to him feel pornographic.
For someone who doesn’t want it, Gregory talks about sex more than anyone I’ve ever met. Usually in a deprecating way, but he’s still immersed in thoughts about it. He despises homosexuals who “can’t control themselves,” ridicules anyone who vaguely conforms to a type. He waxes sarcastic about the obviousness of people’s cravings: certain women who show up in the restaurant bar, also fags he meets in a bar on Second Avenue when he pops in for a nightcap. He describes these sex-hungry barflies in close detail, nastily, as if their loneliness were criminal instead of merely pathetic. Even so, he cultivates this penis-on-legs look calculated to attract these very people.
The shirt and tie he settles on are ghastly. Blue and white broad stripes on the shirt, with a bone-white wingtip collar. The tie a yellow and red psychedelic antique. At a scarred wooden counter, an octogenarian cashier of drastically blurred gender rings them up and stuffs them in a soiled bag.
But they’re awful, Gregory.
Hideous, he laughs.
Why don’t you find something that suits you?
Darkness outside. Motes of snow falling in heavy veils.
I don’t wear things I like to the restaurant, he tells me.
Yes, but it looks like stuff some pimp would wear.
He cocks his head, squints, pushes out his lips and nods. The look says, Now you’re catching on.
He’s so impudently eccentric, suddenly it’s very funny. His revenging joke on the louts. The clothes complete something blank and sexy people expect to find waiting tables and serving drinks. Gregory acts the part, detached from his body by way of his clothes. At this moment he becomes something new for me, a noble soul, trapped in a widely desired form. He has something everybody wants, but for him it has no value. A complete artist. A dandy of sleaze.
You’re fantastic, I tell him, laughing, brushing snow from the fringe hanging over his forehead.
He screws his face into the mask of a Gallic clown: Philippe. He recites the menu of daily specials in a raspy accent. Gregory’s an incredible mimic. He’s almost frighteningly adept at changing into people he’s casually observed, his visual memory of bodies, faces, pictures, and rooms startles me when he plays it back. I walk around oblivious to things, blinded by my ruminations. Gregory drinks things in.
I feel around in my pockets for dollars. We should take a cab, Gregory, it’s getting late and it’s wet. My teeth chatter. You’re freezing, he says, here, here’s a hug, don’t freeze. We walk. Now I’m wet from his snow and my snow. On Seventh Avenue I flag a taxi as we slog to the corner, running ahead, stepping into a crater of slush. I pretend we’ve agreed to take a cab. He gets in without comment, though taxis and similar expenses are awkward for us. If he can’t pay, he feels deficient in the husbandly role he’s assumed, my protector. We are exactly the same height and same slender build, but Gregory emits this honorary manliness around me, a pretense of greater strength and practical resourcefulness I gladly defer to because he’s small and not so tough and needs to feel strong and needed. When he says: I’d kill anyone who tried to hurt you, the absurdity of Gregory killing or even slightly injuring anybody moves me inexpressibly.
Now, he says, I’ve got to iron this shit. He pulls them out of the bag. Some days they have a tasty item or two with no wrinkles but these are a little far gone.
It’s so far out of your way, I said. You know there are thrift shops over your way, four or five of them.
This one generally has the best stuff, though.
Do they make you wear something different every night?
The streets are crawling, the usual mucky swarm. January. A death month.
Look at them all, he says. People. He looks at the shirt. I can’t stand putting these things on more than once.
Yes, I said, you have to wash them and everything. I’m lucky, I never have to dress up. Blue jeans and sweatshirts. But maybe you want me to be glamorous now that I have a job.
The windshield turns the gleaming taillights and walking figures into a melt of drooling colors. Wipers slash the glass, returning things to their solid forms, dapple again with snow, pour into each other.
I take this stuff in with me, I wouldn’t wear it on the street. At the end of the night I stuff it in a trash can.
The cab stutters in traffic. We pass a pet store. Gregory leans over me. Our legs brush. For a moment I feel his weight against me.
What great puppies. I really miss my dog.
You could get one.
I’d never find another Lucie. That dog loved me so much. I’d come in, her little tail would be wagging, she cheered me up.
You throw your clothes away every night?
I have to . . . I don’t want them crapping up the apartment.
You don’t buy different ones every day, though. You must stock up for a week or so . . .
This is taking an eternity, he says, I’m really getting shit from Philippe if he’s there. We
ll, fuck him. No, I go buy something every day when I have to work. It kind of puts me in the mental frame of working.
But Gregory, you don’t go way over there every day.
Most days I do. Sure.
But it takes your whole afternoon . . . it’s too much, you’re always saying you have no time.
He takes out a cigarette, taps the end of it on his thumbnail. Gregory’s nails are unusually wide and stunted-looking, incongruously lacking in elegance. The nails of a Serbian peasant. He offers a sharp, strained smile, a look of irritation. His eyes narrow into curved slits, he’s looking into his private thoughts, I’m not there any more. He lights the cigarette, sitting closer than he did before we passed the pet shop, now he links his fingers between mine, but my hand is a bobbing mooring hook, his mind is a boat drifting to the end of its line. The remaining minutes are glazed, quickened in narrowing intervals by his impatience, there is no room left in this taxi for anything but anxiety about what Philippe might say or do to him when he arrives at work, something characteristically insensitive and menacing, no doubt, or, worse, he’ll greet Gregory in expansive, coke-zonked spirits, feel him up in that obscene way that he has and then make some typically insane demand, sending Gregory out to pick up his, Philippe’s, dry cleaning, or buy magazines at the kiosk in Sheridan Square, these are a couple of Philippe’s standard, psychotic orders, and there are others, sometimes requiring Gregory to get things from Philippe’s apartment at the other end of town, or to deal with wholesalers at the Fulton Fish Market, or to “deliver packages” to various addresses, packages which almost certainly contain coke or smack and for which Gregory is obliged to collect money, thus involving himself in a felony, all things entirely outside Gregory’s professional obligations, outside Gregory’s job description, tasks that have nothing to do with waiting tables or bartending but instead are connected to Philippe’s criminal depravity and insanity. However, should Gregory refuse to do these things, Philippe will fire him.
