by Rahul Mehta
Don and Antwon were sitting close to each other on the couch. Don leaned over to him and said, “See what I’ve been dealing with.” I assumed he was responding to what Antwon had said about the crappy concert and the unappreciative audience, not to my comment about liking the Britney routine, though I couldn’t be sure. They continued grumbling among themselves and popping caps off beer after beer, and after a while I got tired. I disappeared into the bedroom without anyone noticing or saying goodnight.
The next morning Antwon said he wanted to see Niagara Falls. We were only a couple of hours away. “This is probably the closest I’ll ever get, so I might as well.” Neither Don nor I had seen the Falls either.
“I don’t have my passport,” I said. Don and Antwon both had theirs: Don because we were in his apartment and Antwon because he didn’t have a driver’s license, so it was his main form of ID. My passport was in my own apartment, two hours away.
Don said, “American citizens don’t need passports to cross into Canada.”
“True,” I said, “if you’re white.” I looked at Antwon, expecting him to back me up, but he didn’t say anything.
Don said, “Stop playing the race card.”
I told them the story of my one failed attempt to see the Falls.
“My cousin’s grandmother was visiting from India, and we agreed to take her. My cousin and I were both eighteen or so. We drove in my uncle’s car all the way from Poughkeepsie, seven hours away, and when we reached the border we were denied entry. Well, my cousin and I were denied entry. My cousin’s grandmother was fine; she had her passport, a visa, everything. But we only had driver’s licenses. ‘Anyone can get a driver’s license,’ the guard insisted. My cousin said, ‘Our car has New York plates.’ I said, ‘We’re driving a Mercedes.’ But the guard was unmoved. So we found a tour bus in Buffalo that would take my cousin’s grandmother across the border, and my cousin and I waited for three hours in a Friendly’s parking lot, smoking cigarettes. But it was worth it. She loved it, and talked about it the whole way home. My cousin said she was still talking about it when she called him from India two months later.”
“You could have seen the Falls from the American side,” Don said. “You didn’t have to sit in a parking lot.”
“The American side isn’t as good. You only get one first time, and a girl wants hers to be special.” I made doe eyes at him and batted my eyelashes, which he didn’t seem to notice, but Antwon winked at me.
“I don’t want to ruin it for everyone,” I said. “You guys should go on your own.”
Don and Antwon exchanged glances. I imagined them hopping into the car—my car, probably, since it was the more reliable of the two—and peeling out of the driveway, all too happy to be sailing away without me. Sailors at sea, where anything could happen. I’d be alone in Don’s apartment, scrubbing the breakfast dishes. I suddenly felt sick.
“Don’t be silly,” Don said. “You’re coming.”
“What if they don’t let me in? I’m not spending another three hours in the parking lot of Friendly’s.”
“They will,” Don said. “If they don’t, we’ll come back. It’s a nice day for a drive.”
It was true. It was a beautiful spring day, the first after a long, difficult winter.
When we arrived at the border, the guard asked our citizenship. He asked where we were going. He asked if we were carrying fruits or vegetables or firearms. He asked to see what was in our trunk (jumper cables; tools; a bag of old clothes for the Salvation Army, which had been there since we packed up our Crown Heights apartment the previous August). Then he waved us through.
“Toldja,” Don said from the driver’s seat. He pecked me on the cheek, and I found myself half-wishing we had been turned away, just to have been right.
A few minutes later and we were at the Falls. As we walked toward them, I was unimpressed. “I thought they’d be bigger.” I was distracted by the hordes of tourists: fat Americans; endless busloads of Chinese; Indian aunties—not unlike my own cousin’s grandmother—in saris and cardigans and chappals and thick wool socks. It was nothing like I had imagined.
Don and Antwon, on the other hand, were mesmerized. The three of us walked up close, eventually leaning over the railing of the platform that hovered above the Falls. Antwon tried to say something to me, but I couldn’t hear him over the sound of the water. And for a moment it was nice to stand there, sandwiched between Don and Antwon, the mist on my face, the crashing water so loud it drowned out everything else. Nothing else existed. The world fell away. I had the most pleasant sensation of being both there and not there. I wondered if that was how the boys downstairs felt when they blasted their music.
Later, in the pavilion, as we were eating our veggie burgers, I asked Antwon what he was trying to tell me at the Falls.
“Forget it,” he said.
“No,” Don said, in a mock-jealous voice, “what were you two whispering about?”
“As if anyone could have been whispering and still be heard,” I said.
Antwon said, “I was just thinking: people must die here all the time. Personally, I always have the urge to jump. Not that I want to die. My mind never even gets that far. It’s not about dying. It’s about wanting to know what it feels like to float, or fly, or fall, or whatever it feels like. It’s about wanting to feel free. Haven’t you guys ever had that urge?”
Don said, “Yes, always. Leaning over the Falls, the edge of a cliff, the railing at the Empire State Building.”
“What about you?” Antwon asked me.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I guess I have.”
“If you’re not sure, then you haven’t,” Antwon said.
I tried to picture it—climbing over the railing, leaping outward. Maybe I’d do it farther upstream, diving into the river, letting myself get swept away toward the Falls. Would I try to grab onto something at the last minute? Or would I let it happen?
Later, driving home, Don said, “Someone from our school recently died here.”
“Someone I knew?” I asked.
“No. He was a video artist. Not much older than I am. Last summer, his baby had a high fever, and he and his wife took her to the emergency room. After a couple of hours, the hospital staff started asking them questions that had nothing to do with the fever. The hospital told them they would have to leave their baby, she was being held overnight until the fever subsided, and then she would be released into the custody of Child Welfare.
“According to the rumor mill, the authorities thought the couple was abusing the child, but no one seems to know what made the authorities think that or specifically what they think the couple did. The couple spent the next several months racking up legal bills they couldn’t pay, trying to get their baby back. Then one day, the husband got in his car, drove to the Falls, and threw himself in. No warning. No note. At his funeral, the wife showed some of his recent video work, which he had been shooting for months, and which consisted mostly of slow-motion, black-and-white videos of the Falls, mostly in winter. Everyone cried, even the people who barely knew him.”
We continued driving. I was in the passenger seat and had taken control of the radio. When the new Janet Jackson song came on, I danced in my seat. From the highway, I could see the tacky yellow sign of a regional discount chain, and I asked Don if we could stop. I wanted to buy the CD. Antwon said he had to pee.
As we veered onto the exit ramp, Antwon asked, “Do you think he planned it? Do you think he drove the two hours knowing what he would ultimately do? Or do you think he was just planning to shoot video as usual and, leaning over the Falls, found himself unable to resist?”
“Do you think it was guilt?” I asked. “Do you think he’d actually done something to the baby?” No one said anything. I wondered if they thought I was mean for asking.
The discount chain was in a depressing town just off the interstate. The customers were mostly families, mostly rural poor: the men in work boots, like Don’s landlord;
the younger women with peroxide hair, the older ones in elastic waistbands. I felt vaguely worried Antwon would get jumped in the restroom. There was no reason for my concern: these people were as nice as the next. But Antwon rarely left the city, he didn’t understand rural America. So I was relieved when he met up with me at the checkout. At the last minute, I grabbed a Dolly Parton greatest-hits compilation from the discount bin by the register.
In the car, Don said, “Driver’s choice,” and insisted we hear Dolly first, since we’d already heard the Janet Jackson song three times on the radio.
The first track was “Jolene.”
“This song was inspired by a hot bank teller,” I told them. “I read it in an interview. It was early in her marriage, and Dolly was jealous when she noticed her husband was making more and more trips to the bank.”
The next song was “Coat of Many Colors.” We listened to it, and a couple more tracks, and then we reached “I Will Always Love You.”
“I didn’t know Dolly recorded this, too,” I said.
“Too?” Antwon said. “It’s her song. This is the original.”
“Really? I thought the original was Whitney Houston.”
We listened to Dolly’s country twang, so different from the way Whitney’s voice climbed and soared. By the time the song’s bridge came around, Dolly wasn’t even singing, she was simply talking; her voice had dropped to a whisper.
Antwon said, “This version makes so much more sense. It’s less about the ‘I’ and more about the ‘you.’ ”
Something about Antwon’s comment made me mad. I thought, Who is he to judge? Besides, I liked Whitney’s cover. “Whitney’s version has sold more than Dolly’s,” I said. “It’s one of the best-selling singles of all time.”
“There’s little connection between popularity and quality, believe me. Besides, Whitney’s version is all flash. It doesn’t have any of the honesty or regret of Dolly’s. Saying good-bye to someone you love doesn’t sound like a gospel choir. There aren’t so many runs. It feels plainer, more like Dolly’s version, more like a whisper.”
Don said he agreed with Antwon. I thought about Antwon saying good-bye to Don when we left New York. What did they say to one another? Where had they eaten their last dinner? I’d never asked.
Don hadn’t given me permission to switch the CD yet, but I did it anyway, popping in the Janet Jackson, skipping right away to the single that was getting so much airplay. This time I not only danced in my seat, I sang along: “Got nice package alright / Guess I’m gonna have to ride it tonight.”
“Are those really the lyrics?” Antwon asked.
Janet’s Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” was three years away. For now—despite the sexy videos and the Rolling Stone cover with the hands over her bare breasts—she was still America’s sweetheart, the adorable baby girl of the Jackson clan, everyone’s little sister, her cheeks eminently and forever pinchable.
“It’s amazing what Janet gets away with,” I said.
“It doesn’t seem fair,” Antwon said.
When we got home, Antwon asked to see the store receipt from the CDs, and he dialed the phone number on the slip.
“I’d like to speak with the manager.” After waiting, he continued, “Yes, sir, I am calling to make a complaint. I have been shopping at your store for years. I was in there not one hour ago. I was there with my family: my wife and my son. I wanted duct tape. My wife wanted socks. Anyway, my son comes to me with a CD he found in the music department, and I say, Sure, you can have it, thinking to myself, This is a family establishment, a clean, Christian establishment. No reason not to buy my son a CD he found on the shelves. Well, when we got home, I went to duct taping the . . . errr . . . duct, and my wife is fixing dinner in the kitchen, and my son plays the CD on the kitchen stereo—son? What’s the name of that CD? Yes! Janet Jackson—and, sir, can I just read you some of these lyrics?” Antwon proceeded to read the lyrics, carefully and dramatically enunciating every syllable: “ ‘Got nice package alright / Guess I’m gonna have to ride it tonight.’ Now, sir, I’m guessing you and I both know she’s not singing about a UPS delivery, right? We know what she means. And, worse, my son knows what she means. Yes, sir, I understand. Yes, sir. Well, we appreciate that. And now that you know what’s contained in this CD, I trust you won’t stock such . . . such . . . trash, there’s no other way to say it . . . any longer.”
Antwon hung up. “We can return the CD for cash plus five-dollar store credit.”
Don and I burst out laughing, we had been holding it in the whole time. Antwon should have been laughing, too, but he wasn’t. At some point during the phone call, his tone had shifted, and he seemed genuinely mad, but I couldn’t figure out why.
Antwon disappeared into the bathroom to start getting ready for his performance that night.
I thought about what he had said in the car about it not being fair.
I remembered an art book he had given Don, and which I had found on the same bookshelf where I’d discovered the anthology of gay erotica. It was a book of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, whose name came up often when Congress made its fuss over public funding of art. I was thinking now of a particular self-portrait: Mapplethorpe in bottomless leather chaps, his naked, hairy asshole wrapped around the thick handle of a bullwhip. In the photo, he is turned around, looking over his shoulder at the camera, fully meeting the gaze of the viewer. He is offering a challenge. He is trying to shock us. Yet there is a softness to his expression. He looks, more than anything, vulnerable. The photo was included among those that the Corcoran Gallery in D.C. refused to display, even though the gallery had promised Mapplethorpe it would. The artist had died of AIDS just three or four months before the gallery reneged on its word. If Mapplethorpe were alive now, I thought, he’d be just a few years older than Antwon.
I could hear Antwon cursing in the bathroom. “Don, do you have any aftershave?” he shouted, and Don said no.
“What does aftershave do?” I asked. I’d never used it, though I seemed to remember that my dad did.
“It’s an antiseptic,” Don explained.
A minute later Antwon was still cursing, and I went in to see what was wrong. He had cut himself. He was standing at the mirror, blood on his chin. He was in his underwear: white cotton briefs. They made him look young.
“Let me put a Band-Aid,” I said. He was taller than I was, and when I put the Band-Aid on I had to lean in close and I lost my balance. My forearms touched his chest. It was warm and clean from his shower.
His cheeks smelled like mouthwash.
“Did you put Listerine on your face?” I asked.
“It’s the same as aftershave.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.” He looked at me and smiled, and for a second I thought he was going to pinch my cheek, but instead he slapped my ass and called me a pet name I’d never been called before: Squirrel. I thought of the enchanted creatures in the forest who stood in for Prince Charming before Sleeping Beauty found her real one. I thought of Rocky and Bullwinkle, a bickering gay couple if I’d ever seen one. I thought of hoarding: how—after moving upstate—whenever I visited New York City, I would imagine each art exhibit, each dance concert, each drag show, each cultural excursion as an acorn, and if I collected enough I might just make it through the long winter. I remembered myself, a few years ago, not long after I started dating Don, on a couch in the back of a bar (a different couch and a different bar from where Don first told me about Antwon, though they are all the same), sitting in the lap of an older man, contemplating cheating on Don, fingering the older man’s gold ring: Married? Was. Was? He died. How? (Pause.) The usual way. (Even longer pause—his body tense, then relaxed—then in a jarring, cheerful voice . . .) But I’m a healthy squirrel.
I didn’t go home with the man that night. Now, I smoothed the Band-Aid over Antwon’s chin, allowing my finger to drift down his neck, across his chest, circling the gray hairs. Antwon remained frozen. He loo
ked confused. The door was open. Don was in the kitchen, just down the hall. I didn’t know why I was doing it, but it felt good. Antwon’s body felt good. I ran my fingers down his torso—his dancer’s abs still taut but beginning to soften with age—and over his cotton briefs, tracing the contours of his hip.
Antwon said he’d figured out a way to solve the problems from the previous night’s performance. Instead of “surrendering to the desire of others,” he was only going to surrender to the desires of a few preselected people whom he himself had screened and approved. He would choose five of us—me and Don and three of his pet students from his class that week. Four of us would be in charge of calling out the numbers, and one student would hold the numbered cards. We would determine the length of the dance instead of the audience. Then he would preselect three more pet students—one to say eyes, one to say mouth, one to say body—so there would be eight of us total, standing on the side of the stage, controlling him.
The dance began. Mouth.
“This past week I haven’t been able to sleep. The downstairs neighbors are loud, but I don’t think that’s it.”
The girl said mouth again, and Antwon stopped talking.
Eyes. Antwon, blinded, ambled to the front row of the audience, almost tripping over a man sitting in a chair. It was an elderly man, perhaps the grandfather of one of the students performing. Antwon stroked his legs. Then he sat in his lap and caressed his face. In another venue, in New York for instance, people would have been laughing. Here they were not. Antwon stood up and started moving toward the back of the stage.
Body. He froze. Eyes. He opened them wide, stood silent and still, fully meeting the gaze of the viewers.
Mouth. “I couldn’t sleep in New York either. It’s been over a year since I slept soundly.”
Mouth. Body. Eyes. All in quick succession. Antwon stumbled around. He looked lost. He settled into some simple gestures, mostly elbows and hands.
Mouth, the girl said again. “That’s when my mom died: a year ago. We were very close, though I hadn’t seen her in a long time. She lived in Indiana, where I was born and raised. Thirty years I lived in New York, and she never visited, not once. Never saw me perform. When she died, she left me a Cutlass Supreme. I don’t know how to drive. I’ve never known how to drive.”
