Matanuska, part 1

A smooth voice filled the car and said, “Later this hour, we’re going to be speaking with Todd LeMarc of the Shakespeare Society who we’re proud to welcome to Anchorage. Book your tickets now by calling 555-ARTS. This is Rod Mayberry. You’re listening to KLAP, Anchorage, Alaska.” After a short silence and a quick burst of static, a low Smetana piece began to play, sounding like a mistake.

Todd turned to the driver, a bird-like blonde girl. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Oh, no, no. No, go ahead. Everyone else does,” she chirped. “Crack the window. But not too far.”

Todd didn’t need to be reminded. It was 7:30 in the morning, there wasn’t even an inkling of a sunrise, and the cold was – well, not to be believed. It was cozy in the bird-girl’s car. He cracked the window slightly, and the sliver of frigid air licked at the side of his unshaven face. Cigarette smoke filled the car. It smelled of toast, and it occurred to Todd that he hadn’t eaten since the flight in from Tampa yesterday.

“So. Are you enjoying Alaska so far?” The bird-girl had cracked her window, and had to shout over the wind. They both shivered.

“I haven’t seen much of it so far,” Todd said through gritted teeth. Then, lamely, “But it seems nice.”

“Yeah. It’s pretty dark.”

“That it is. I think I slept through yesterday.”

“Oh. That’s a shame.” She seemed genuinely sad.

“Jet-lag, I guess.”

“Yeah. A real shame.” She coughed a few times here.

He threw his cigarette out the window, and she immediately closed them both. Then locked them.

“So,” he said, still shivering, “what can you tell me about Rod Mayberry? Am I in for it?”

“Rod? Oh, he’s alright,” she said wearily. “Since he heard you were coming, he’s been calling the theater five times a day to check on ticket sales for your lecture.”

“Hm. How are ticket sales?”

Ignoring this, she said, “Yes, he gets very excited when he gets to speak to somebody theatrical. I think he’s a playwright or something. He’s harmless. And he’s always at the station, day and night.”

He giggled. “Probably doesn’t notice the difference.”

“He’s looking forward to talking to you,” she said. “Like I said, there’s not a whole lot of theater up here.”

“Well, I hope I don’t disappoint him.” Todd touched his pack of cigarettes through his pocket. “I’m more an academic than anything else. A lecturer.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed.

The Smetana piece came to an end. For a moment there was silence. Todd listened to the roar and crunch of the bird-girl’s car over the snow, and the whirr of the heater. In the dark at the horizon line, he imagined he could make out the barest outline of a hulking mountain range.

A brief burst of static. Then; “This is Rod Mayberry. You’re listening to KLAP, Anchorage, Alaska. That was Bedrich Smetana’s tone poem ‘Richard III’ from 1858.”

There was a pause, and the sound of fumbling. He continued, his voice deep and jolly. “Later on this hour, we’re going to be talking with Todd LeMarc of the Shakespeare Society who will be giving a talk on Shakespeare’s clowns tonight at the Discovery Theater at 8pm. Don’t miss it. Right now, though, we’re going to open up the phone lines, and give away a pair of tickets to this excellent event.”

The bird-girl hissed slightly. “What on earth is he doing?”

“Hm?”

“We’ve told him, no more tickets,” she sighed. “Thank goodness I brought a couple of vouchers.”

Mayberry continued. “The first caller with the correct answer to this question wins the tickets.” He cleared his throat. “In what year did Shakespeare write his great tragedy, ‘Richard III?’” With some relish, he added, “oh! And there are two acceptable answers to this question. The phone lines are blocked, but I will open them up between now, and when I get to zero.”

More fumbling. A sneeze somewhere in the background. A clicking noise. A quick burst of static.

Then Mayberry again. “Ten. Nine. Eight.”

The bird-girl may have been looking at him oddly.

Mayberry, “Seven. Six. Five.”

The bird-girl looked back out front.

“1591 or 92,” Todd said.

The bird-girl said nothing.

Mayberry, “Three. Two. One. Zero.” The sound of a telephone ringing. Mayberry said, “Hello, KLAP. May I put you on the air?” Again some clicking and a pause. Finally Mayberry said, “Oh, no. No, I’m sorry. 1492 is incorrect. Thanks for calling.” A quick pause and a burst of static. “Well,” Mayberry said, “we’ll try again later in the hour.

“That’s it?” Todd asked. “Only one caller?”

The bird-girl shrugged. She whistled four notes which sounded suspiciously like a commercial jingle, then was quiet.

“Hopefully, Mr. LeMarc will be arriving at the studio soon,” Mayberry chuckled. “I sure hope he doesn’t freeze to death out there. And now, here’s the overture to Benjamin Britten’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’” Mayberry said. “This is Rod Mayberry. You’re listening to KLAP, Anchorage, Alaska.” A burst of static, and the Britten piece began.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Todd asked. “Are we late?”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s just kidding,” she said. “How is your hotel? Are you enjoying your hotel?”

Thrown, Todd said, “Yes. Yes, thanks. It’s fine.” Then, “Freeze to death?”

The bird-girl laughed. “Well, it is cold.”

“Are we near the studio?”

“Oh, we’re getting there.”

Todd looked out the window. Still no sign of the sun. They were passing through an industrial park full of low buildings now, all of them dark. Squinting, he tried to locate those mountains again, but couldn’t. He knew they were there, and, from his flight in, he knew they were huge. He felt small. He felt trapped in a close-up. The heater whirred, and the Britten played. He touched his pack of cigarettes through his pocket.

“If you keep your eyes peeled, you might see a moose,” she said.

“Great,” he said.

“We’ll be there soon,” she said. “Don’t worry. He’s very excited to speak with you.”

She whistled a few more notes, then was silent.

Matanuska, part 2

In the darkness, the bird-girl’s car crunched its way over the snow into the deserted parking garage, and she nosed it into a handicapped parking space.

“We’re here,” she said.

Todd put on his woolly hat, wrapped his scarf around his neck, and stepped out into the frigid air. The bird-girl watched him suiting up, then glanced at the 10 foot walk to the door of the office building, back at Todd, and shrugged. In a swift move, Todd lit a cigarette. The smoke and the mist of his breath mingled, and he exhaled a cloud.

Obediently, he followed her toward the front door. Not a soul was in sight.

At the door, she pressed a button. The door buzzed and clicked. She held it open for him. He tossed his full cigarette on the ground. “Thanks,” he said, walking past her into the lobby.

In silence, they walked down an anonymous tan hallway, past door after identical door, all of them closed and unmarked. The row of fluorescents hummed as they went.

At the end of the hall, there was one final door. Somebody had written “KLAP” on a paper plate with a red magic marker, and taped it to the door. The bird-girl opened the door for him, put her finger to her lips, and let him pass.

Immediately, Todd noted that this was less a “studio,” and more of a “home office,” or “hermit’s cave.” Every piece of furniture was covered with books and scraps of paper. There was an ancient fax machine sitting on a couple of overflowing filing cabinets. Enormous book cases held thousands of CDs, arranged by year, with 1450-1500 just to Todd’s left. Further in, an arrangement of computer servers, satellite equipment, and old reel-to-reels made a makeshift wall.

A shadow flickered in the fluorescence. Now standing beside Todd was an enormously tall man – well over six foot, perhaps nearing seven – looking down at him. His face was odd. Lumpy, with one eye looking looking elsewhere.

The giant smiled and, with a surprisingly squeaky voice said, “I’m Vince. Rod’ll be with you in a moment.” Vince turned on his heel, then went and sat on a tiny chair and began tapping at a computer keyboard. The bird-girl had sat down, and was reading a magazine. Todd looked around, and found a chair. He sat.

Just past the wall of computer servers, Todd could see the man himself, Rod Mayberry, sitting behind a desk, speaking into his headset mic. It was as if Santa Claus had dressed in a flannel shirt, a hunter’s flak jacket, and tall baseball cap and taken a job as a telephone operator. He was probably 65. He glanced up at Todd with twinkly blue eyes and waved while he continued to speak, and fiddled with a phone cable.

“The phone lines are blocked, but I will open them up between now, and when I get to zero,” Todd heard him say in a pungent, jolly voice.

He began to count backwards from ten, while he put an office phone back on the hook, and plugged his phone cable into a little white phone.

“Three. Two. One.” He flipped a switch on his console. “Zero.”

The little white telephone rang.

Mayberry answered. “Hello, KLAP. May I put you on the air?” He fumbled with some switches, and seemed to be listening to something. Finally he said, “What’s your name? Jason? Alright, Jason. Go ahead. In what year did Shakespeare write ‘Richard III?’” Silence for a moment. “Oh, sorry, Jason. No, I’m sorry. 1812 is incorrect. Thanks for calling.” Mayberry chuckled, and unplugged his phone again. “And now, here’s the love theme from Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ‘Romeo and Juliet,’” Mayberry said. “This is Rod Mayberry. You’re listening to KLAP, Anchorage, Alaska.” He flipped a few switches. Silence. He beckoned to Todd. “Come have a seat. You must be Mr. LeMarc.”

Todd crossed to the desk. A lopsided maroon chair faced the desk. It was covered with crumbs. Mayberry indicated, Todd sat. The two men stared at each other for a moment. Suddenly, an enormous sneeze punctured the silence. Todd started. It could only have come from Vince the giant. Mayberry appeared not to have noticed, and kept staring with those twinkly blue eyes.

“Well, I’m glad to have you, Mr. LeMarc.”

“Call me Todd,” said Todd.

“Alright, Todd.” He smiled for a moment too long. Then; “I hope you don’t mind, but I don’t like to talk to the guest off the air. Kills the spontaneity.” He smiled again, then looked down at his notes. “You can put that headset on.” He checked the CD player. “Four minutes,” he said.

Todd picked up the headset. There was duct tape on the left earpiece, and the mic jutted out from somewhere beneath the duct tape. He felt ridiculous, but adjusted the jerry-rigged thing with as much gravitas as he could muster. He crossed his legs, and leaned back in the wobbly chair.

Mayberry stared down at his notes. Todd sat. And sat.

Uncomfortable, he looked around the office. He saw a bobblehead baseball player statuette, next to a plexiglass obelisk which must have been some sort of award. There was another bookshelf, crammed full of books on Alaskan history. On top of the bookshelf was a stack of seven or eight identically gift-wrapped packages. Behind Mayberry was a window which looked out on complete, inky darkness.

Abruptly, Mayberry looked up, and fixed Todd with his eyes. “Forty-five seconds,” he said, staring smilingly at Todd.

Todd stared back, figuring he could last forty-five seconds.

After what seemed like an eternity, Mayberry lit up. He flipped a switch on his console.

“This is Rod Mayberry. You’re listening to KLAP, Anchorage, Alaska. That was the love theme from Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ from 1869. And now, a very special treat. Here with me now is Todd LeMarc of the Shakespeare Society. He’s here in Anchorage to give a lecture at the Discovery Theater tonight at 8pm. You’ve got to be there. Don’t miss it. Todd, good morning.”

“Hello, Rod,” Todd said. “Thanks for having me.”

“It’s my pleasure, Todd. Todd, I know you’re here to plug your event, and I’m happy to do it for you,” bellowed Mayberry. “I’m happy to give away some tickets to our listeners for you. But, Todd?”

“Yes – Rod?”

“You are a playwright, correct?”

“Well – no. No, I’m not. I’m an academic,” said Todd. “A lecturer.”

“Hogwash, Todd,” said Mayberry. I can’t think of a single academic whose field is Shakespeare who isn’t some sort of playwright.”

“Well, that’s certainly one of the stereotypes,” Todd said, striving for affability. “I’ve played around with structure a bit, of course. Nothing too serious.”

“A-HA!!” Mayberry roared. “Of course you’ve played around with structure a bit.”

A pause.

“You, um. You got me there,” said Todd.

“Let me get down to brass tacks, Todd,” said Mayberry. “The only reason you’re not a playwright is because you haven’t got a story. You figure Shakespeare told them all, and anything you do would be a re-hash.”

“That’s – that’s, um.”

“Ho, ho, ho,” Mayberry actually said. “That’s some good radio there, sonny. Now listen. I understand. I haven’t asked you here to mess with you. I’ve got your story and I’m going to give it to you, right here on the radio. In front of all of my listeners.”

“Ha, ha. Wow. That’s, that’s very generous of you, Rod,” Todd said. “I don’t feel up to the challenge.”

“Nonsense,” Mayberry cut him off. His blue eyes narrowed and turned icy. Glacial. “You’re going to do it, Todd. You’re going to hear me out, and you’re going to do it.”

Todd could see he meant business. He looked around. No sign of the bird-girl.

Another thunderous sneeze from Vince the giant.

He looked back at Mayberry.

“So, Todd,” said Mayberry. “What do you say?”

Ground Zero: part 1

//

Past the end of my street, etched into the sky, are a pair of twin smokestacks. They are a nondescript dun color which easily and provocatively takes on whatever more vivid color the sky suggests. Sometimes, with a tooth-aching blue behind them, they are the sands of the Sahara, and leak the tiniest fraction of bone-white smoke. At others, they accept the oranges, yellows, greens, and purples of a Brooklyn sunset, and become tie-dyed, belching out the blue smoke from the first bong you ever smoked. More often than not, when I stumble towards them, they are rumbling in a creamy violet, nighttime lurkers caught out by the headlights on the Expressway. At those times, the smoke is immaterial, an invisible force that occasionally causes the red pin-pricks that crown them, ostensibly alerting planes to their presence, to flicker and dance. For a time, I had fancied myself one of these smokestacks, forever blending and morphing. More ridiculously, I had fancied him my twin smokestack, overlooking the obvious fact that he does not blend, does not smoke, and is nobody’s twin.

//

It begins innocuously enough.

We are going to a party at Rob’s apartment in the East Village. Freddy, who seems to know everyone in town while simultaneously hating all of them, had shamed me into coming. It was his great insight to confide his loathing to me, knowing full well that I am both too much of a coward to ever tell the host what Freddy says about him over drinks, and that I probably loathe Freddy a little bit myself. We had been lovers briefly and then friends for ages, and our relationship perches delicately on the fulcrum of what we will never say to each other. It’s me and Freddy and this guy named Sam or, I think maybe Mark, and we’ve all gone to dinner before the party, all of us constantly pretending to check messages on our cellphones, and then even more furiously pretending that the fake party that the fake caller invites us to seems even more preposterous and dull than the party we’re actually going to. After enough gimlets and tapas and cellphone trickery, we negotiate our way into actually going to this party.

Anyway, Freddy’s in publishing, and associates with a crowd that straddles a gap between college-educated nondescript whiteys, college-educated gangstaz, college-educated lawyaz, seriously rich society types, shell-shocked former club kids, would-be artists, actual artists, and the people that find these stereotypes fascinating. I had landed in New York, in the nondescript-whitey/would-be artist/finding-it-fascinating category with a dull, fleshy whoomp about eight years ago, when I was 21, and had been deeply shocked that my landing hadn’t been at least a crash. I am no longer finding it fascinating.

As a sort of a sidebar, I should say that, in the subsequent eight years, I’ve still managed to find a way to not make the skyscrapers vibrate and breathe with my presence. Perhaps they tolerate me now, but it’s probably because, in spite of it all, I continue on as a dun-colored smokestack, coldly blending in with whatever color is in the sky.

Whatever. The party’s being thrown by this kid named Rob, an “Asian” guy who works, in some way I can never narrow down, for the Internet. Right off the bat there’s problems, because “Asia” probably is too broad a palette with which to paint Rob, who grew up in Jersey and whose grandparents came here from Korea, and there’s probably too much to do for The Internet to really get what he actually does. Frankly, he’d probably be pretty interesting, if you could get him to stop talking about dick sizes and sex opportunities for like a second.

This is where we’re going, and, I’ll tell you right now, this is where I’ve been going and will keep going, until the whole thing comes toppling down, and we are all lost forever.

So, anyway, we pay the bill (with Sam or Mark and Freddy paying the bulk of it), and stand up and stagger around, and pretend that we really mean to trip or fall down or smack our face into the corner of our chairs, as we collect our jackets and hats and get the fuck out of whatever place on 3rd Avenue we’re eating in and start heading over to 2nd Avenue and the “party.” We get outside, and it stinks of piss and those honeyed nuts, and there are, as always, far too many people around, and we are shrieky and snotty, and unthinkingly elbow some of these people out of our way, laughing at them, not caring that we are making idiots of ourselves, and that most of them are laughing at us, but we don’t give a fuck, and just want to get to the party.

Somehow, we manage to not get hit by a taxi, and get buzzed in, and stumble into Rob’s living room which is crawling with the usual suspects. Rob’s stereo is blasting Bjork, and people are laughing really loudly, and it hurts my head a little bit, so Sam or Mark and I head for the bathroom to do a couple bumps of coke. There is a line, and we get on it behind some girl who hasn’t been informed that goth is really not that cool a look. She has also done her dyed jet-black hair in cornrows, which just isn’t a nice look for a white chick. She smiles at us…and suddenly I am tempted to smile back, and maybe even start a conversation, but then Mark (or Sam) giggles, and I am forced to roll my eyes and patronize her for being such a goof-ball.

Two cute boys come out of the bathroom, and you can just tell that one of them has just had his dick sucked, and you can actually tell which one it was. I experience a brief stab of jealousy, as they are young and cute and excited and feeling naughty and on top of the world, but Sam or Mark rolls his eyes and says “Please,” and I control myself, and we laugh as the oblivious and drunken goth chick collides with the bathroom and closes herself in. We are looking around trying to spot someone hot and available, but we are not seeing anyone meeting the criteria. I see a guy I went home with after Rob’s last party, but he doesn’t see me, and that’s for the best.

We are impatient for the coke, and finally the goth chick comes out of the bathroom, where she’d clearly been puking, and she staggers off, looking even paler than before, and tinged with green. Mark or Sam says “Nice cornrows,” as she passes, and she smiles in exactly the same way as she did before.

Finally, we’re in. Sam or Mark takes out his cute little vial, and unscrews it, and there’s a cute little spoon attached to the screwtop, and we each do some bumps. And we stand there sniffing and shuffling and trying to be cool and he puts his vial away and looks at me and I look back at him and suddenly he comes over and starts kissing me. I’ve never really thought of Sam/Mark in that way, but the coke gives me a certain bodily detachment, and I let him keep kissing me, now with too much tongue, as I think about something else.

He stops and asks me if I want another bump and I’m feeling good so I say okay and he preps it for me as I look around at the cheesy black and white nudes Rob has hanging in his bathroom. I do the bump, and now Mark/Sam is pressing a pretty insistent boner up against me, but I’m not into it, so I suggest we go up to the roof and check the scene up there and he seems disappointed, but plays it cool. We will spend the rest of our lives pretending that it didn’t happen.

Anyway, we come out of the bathroom and I guess we’d been in there for a while because there’s a pretty long line now, and the people are looking pretty disgusted, but they can go fuck themselves, obviously. I’m feeling more awake now, really buzzing, and I sniff a few more times and the next thing I know I’m climbing the stairs to the roof, but I don’t see Sam/Mark, and figure he must have gone to bitch about me to Freddy, who will certainly bitch back, as he’s got a lot of dirt on me. Oh, well.

It doesn’t matter because I’m on the roof now, and it is glorious!! The city rises up in every direction, the Con-Ed building seems so huge from here, but also small, like an overgrown toy. The air is cool and crisp and there are no clouds, and a handful of stars sparkle, and lit windows in faraway buildings, and I can see everything, and I feel like I’m flying.

There’s maybe fifty people up here, but I don’t see anyone I recognize. So I start wandering among the little pockets of people. Some dude with dreads hands me a blunt which I hit a few times and pass along to this bald guy, and I’m just wandering around, feeling high and unstoppable, and that’s when I see him.

//

Around the East side of the building, there’s a little ventilation box, and his back is to me, and he’s sitting there by himself, Indian-style, on the ventilation box, gazing off across the river into Brooklyn. Somehow empowered by the cocktails and the coke and the weed, I float over towards him, his broad back expanding and contracting, jeweled lights of the outer boroughs tinkling and shimmering, and I decide that I will try to play it cool.

I stand next to the ventilation box. He’s sitting, so it’s impossible to tell how tall he is, but our heads are at about the same height. I stand there, looking where he’s looking.

“It’s so beautiful,” I say, not sure if I’m playing it cool or not.

He looks at me, I look at him. His eyes are so dark, his face so trusting and open. I feel like I’ve been punched really hard in the stomach. I swallow to avoid following my opening line with something cheesy like, ‘and so are you.’

He smiles, and it is a radiatingly shy smile. “Yeah,” he offers.

“What are you doing over here by yourself?” I ask, trying hard not to say things like ‘I love you,’ or ‘marry me.’

“I don’t know, really.” He sighs a labored, melancholy sigh that only a recent NYU grad could muster. “I came here with someone, but I haven’t seen him for hours.”

I have a quick flash of the two boys coming out of the bathroom, but that is not productive. “I’m sorry,” I say.

“That’s okay. I didn’t really know him that well anyway.” He turns to me again and holds out a hand. “I’m Philip.”

I take the hand, again using restraint, not snatching greedily, not yanking, but shaking lightly. “Paul,” I say.

“Nice to meet you, Paul.” Something in his demeanor suggests that this handshake is taking place over a picket fence in a Midwestern suburb, rather than on a rooftop in the East Village. This excites me. I hold on for just slightly too long, my first mistake. He flinches almost imperceptibly. This is a delicate situation.

I am unsure about where to steer the conversation from here. There are the usual subjects, such as ‘do you know the host,’ ‘where do you live,’ ‘what do you do,’ and the rest, but they seem inadequate. As the silence continues on, I start to feel panic. I smile in a way that I hope is both non-committal and reassuring.

He smiles back, then sighs his theatrical sigh. “I hate this party,” he says, gazing back out across the river.

“Why?” I ask as neutrally as possible.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs his shoulders. “These people are such, I don’t know, phonies.”

I chuckle. “What did you say your name was? Holden Caulfield?”

He looks at me again, trying to see if I’m mocking or just teasing. I can’t tell what he sees, apart from some lecherous older guy making a sad attempt at youthful charm. Either way, he smiles lightly. “Yeah. Someone told me the ducks are all out in Brooklyn. I was trying to spot them.”

“I live in Brooklyn,” I say, trying to keep too much suggestion from my tone.

“Let me guess,” he says, putting his fingers to his temples and closing his eyes. “Williamsburg.” He grins with some self-satisfaction.

“Worse,” I say. “Park Slope.”

He groans and laughs. “It had to be one or the other. Though, truth be told, I’d take a nice yuppie over a crazed hipster any day of the week.”

My heart flops at his turn of phrase. Once again I fight the urge to either touch his face or throw myself from the roof. “Well,” I say, “I’m too poor to be a yuppie, and too lame to be a hipster. Plus, I don’t live in the brownstone part of Park Slope, I live in the muffler shop part.”

“Hmmm. Well, what are you, then? I mean, besides poor and lame,” he says, and I am thrilled that I have his attention, and nervous that the drugs will fuck it up for me. This is a delicate matter.

“I am reminded of the old children’s proverb,” I begin, “as was repeated ad nauseum by myself and compatriots in my long lost youth.” I deepen my voice and intone, “‘My mother is Chinese, my father is Japanese, and I am Swiss Cheese.’” Ichh. The drugs fucked it up for me.

He laughs, though. “God, you are lame.”

“I speak the truth,” my heart racing, wondering what on earth else I might say. “Let me try now,” dreading myself. I put my fingers to my temples and close my eyes. I feel a little bit dizzy with my eyes closed, and see ghostly patterns behind my eyelids, and I pray to god I don’t fall on my face. “You are the oldest of several children, born in Ohio. You arrived in New York just over four years ago, the first time you’d ever been here, to study at NYU. You graduated in the spring with a useless arts degree. You are currently trying to figure out what to do with yourself, and are dreading the fact that you have to go back to Ohio to visit your family for the holidays.” I squint my eyes open dizzily for this last part; “You hate the guy you came here with, and plan to never see him again.” I open my eyes, and make a big show of shaking off the voices.

He is staring at me, his pale face catching the light from whatever source is perpetually lighting New York. He looks frozen, encased in a prehistoric block of ice, just staring.

I shiver, and shake a lingering prophetic voice out of my left hand. “What?” I ask.

“You’re close,” he finally says, looking back out towards Brooklyn. “It’s Indiana, not Ohio. And we moved to Alaska when I was fourteen.” Now he shivered, and pulled his corduroy jacket closed around his throat. “And I don’t know the guy I came with tonight well enough to hate him.”

“Oh, hey,” I ache to put my arm around him, and run my hand through his inky black hair. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“No, no worries,” he says, his shoulders hunching forward. “I’m an open book, I guess.”

We are quiet for a moment. I start to panic again, and think that it might be nice with another bump of coke. Vaguely, I wonder what Sam/Mark might be up to, and if a couple of sniffs are worth a blowjob. Somehow I suspect that they aren’t, but I seem to have fucked this thing up completely.

Suddenly, he speaks. “I’m sick of being here,” his head almost completely retracted into his jacket. “I want to leave.”

I am slightly shocked. Most of the NYU kids I’ve encountered are brazen but skittish. This is a breach of protocol. I shiver lightly. “Where do you want to go?”

He looks straight at me. “Brooklyn,” he says. “The Muffler Shop District.”

//

Ground Zero: part 2

//

We are in a cab, me and Philip and Raj (the driver). Somehow we have extricated ourselves from the party. Of course, I was convinced that it was early, but, then, me and Freddy and Mark/Sam hadn’t arrived until late, and time is warping in on itself tonight. I think that it’s around 2, but, then, some people feel that that’s early, and it’s all really relative, and here I am with this beautiful boy.

We’re on the Manhattan Bridge. I managed to score some coke from Sam/Mark (who was in the middle of a “conversation” with the guy I went home with after Rob’s last party) on my way out, and I did a few bumps before we left – Philip was standing impatiently, and fetchingly, by the door, shifting his weight around – and the view is, of course, exquisite. We hang on by threads in this city. To our right, the Brooklyn Bridge is running in a seeming parallel and, for all of its stodgy heaviness, it looks like a jeweled spider’s web, hanging impossibly over the mouth of the harbor.

Philip has been silent since the moment we hit the cold air on 2nd Avenue. There wasn’t much in the way of traffic, and we are two harmless-looking gay boys, so we got a cab pretty easily. Raj is firmly against going to Brooklyn, as we are his last fare for the night, and he has to get home to Flushing and his two brothers after this, but, then, we all have to do things we don’t quite want to do.

I look over at Philip. He is like a discarded doll, flung against the far side of the cab’s back seat, staring dolefully out the window at the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Hey,” I say, the first time I’ve tried to break our silence since getting in the cab.

He shakes his head back and forth violently, shaking something off. He looks at me, and I feel no less punched in the stomach than when I met him, maybe an hour ago. “Hey,” he says to me.

“You okay?” He doesn’t look okay, but, then, he doesn’t look distressed either. He looks like he looks.

He listens to the noise of the cab. A van whooshes past. The heater hisses. He looks into my eyes, and I am shocked again by how dark his are. His hand threads its way into mine, secretly. It is strong but soft, and squeezes. He looks back at the Bridge.

I want to say more to him, but am at an utter loss as to what it might be. Frankly, it’s slightly shocking that he wants to come all the way out here anyway. Truth be told, it felt pretty good to be leaving the party with someone so young and beautiful, if, in fact, anyone had seen us go. However, now that we’d made our grand exit, all else is mystery. Who is this sitting beside me, his moist hand gripping mine? I shudder. The less I think about it the better.

“Swiss Cheese,” he says.

I look at him, and he is looking off into the night. “What?” I ask.

“ ‘…and I am Swiss Cheese,’” he recites.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, you are.” And he is.


//

And suddenly we are standing on the corner of my street, just outside of the little Spanish restaurant which is open but empty, its handful of blinking yellow lights making patterns on the sidewalk. “Hay Flan,” says the handwriting on a paper plate in the window. “Cuchifrito,” says the pink awning. Raj has driven off, and we are standing on the dancing yellow sidewalk with our hands in our pockets like a couple of strangers.

Philip is looking at me. “Which way?” he finally says.

I am slightly startled, thinking for a moment that he is a mirage and will vanish, that the water cupped in my hands would turn out to be sand. I wake up. “This way,” I say and start walking. He follows me. For a moment I am reminded of the story my father used to tell, of how he met his dog Dusty when he was just a boy, and Dusty was the puppy that followed him home. I wonder if I didn’t spend a lot of my childhood hoping that a puppy would follow me home.

Past the end of my street are twin smokestacks, and there they are, looming and purple and majestic as we walk towards them.

“Look,” I say, indicating them.

He looks and I look at him and he looks at me and seems nervous.

I decide to be brave, and I finally get the nerve to put my arm around his shoulders. “Don’t worry,” I say.

And he is stiff, but then seems to relax and leans against me as we walk.


//

Philip is sitting on my couch, I am fiddling around in the kitchen, looting the refrigerator of the last remaining beers. And, though I always keep some nice beer to offer guests, it suddenly occurs to me that it doesn’t really matter what type of beer you keep in your refrigerator, that guests usually don’t give a fuck what kind of beer you serve, and that they usually don’t even finish their beer.

I bring him his beer which he promptly sets on the coffee table. I sit next to him, a respectful distance away. He comes slightly closer. I am unsure what to do. I drink my beer. He inches a little closer. I don’t know what he wants. He looks at me. I look at him. I put my arm around him. He rests his head on my chest. I squeeze. He shifts and settles. We sit like that. I don’t know what I want. I drink my beer. I stroke his hair. He breathes.

“I’m a virgin,” he says, inexplicably.

I have no idea what to say. I stroke his hair. I kiss the top of his head, my nose filling with the smell of scalp and shampoo. “That’s okay,” I say, inanely. We sit.

“I’m drunk,” he says, sounding sleepy.

“Me too,” I say. I am not sleepy.

“Where’s your bed?” he asks.

I take my arm from him and sit up and say, “Come on.” He looks at me and his eyes are droopy, but I can’t tell if it’s seduction or sleep. I stand up and look down and he looks small on the couch, shoes off, feet in socks tucked under himself, hair messy from where I’ve been playing with it. I extend my hand, and he takes it and gets up. We walk down the hall to my bedroom; it is dim and smells of cigarettes.

He takes off his shirt. He has the body of a skinny guy who recently went on a workout craze. It doesn’t seem to quite be his body yet. There is a light dusting of black hair across his pale chest and belly. He is curves and contours.

He lies down on my bed. I shut the door.

I take off my shirt and pants and lie down next to him. He is shivering. I put my arms around him, feeling the flesh of his back against the flesh of my chest. He sighs and calms. I don’t know what he wants. I don’t know what I want. This is a delicate matter.

We lie there like that. His breathing slows down.

We lie there in my bed. My arms are around him. He has taken one of my hands and is rubbing it lightly with his thumb, ever more slowly. He stops. His breathing is deep.

He is asleep.

Something in me wants to cry, something else wants to crush him, to break his ribcage and puncture his lungs. Something wants to rape. Something wants to protect.

I lie there with my arms around him as he sleeps. I feel myself drift.


//

It is later. The sun is not up, but there is the sense that it is coming soon. I may have slept, but I can’t be sure. He is asleep. He has turned and is facing me. His fists are balled and tucked under his chin and my arm is across his waist. Our faces are a few inches apart, and I can both feel and smell his breath. It’s funny about faces, how when you get really close to one, it changes, how it bulges out from the nose, and the forehead recedes like in a fun-house mirror. His eyes are closed, and his eyeballs are moving behind the lids…dreaming. His lashes are black and long, almost feminine.

I take my arm away, gently, and get up slowly and put on my robe. Softly, I leave the bedroom, closing the door behind me. I walk down the hall. I open the sliding glass door in the living room and step out onto my tiny concrete rectangle of balcony. The wind is cold and cuts through my robe and I can feel it chilling me. My bare feet tingle on the concrete. I sigh heavily and realize that no one is hearing me.

Downstairs on the street, my Syrian landlord Omar’s minivan is clicking hollowly; he must have just got home from work. He works a ludicrous number of hours, in addition to owning the building. Also his sons work and go to college. Also his cousin who owns the building next door and his cousin’s sons. It seems crazy to work so hard.

I have goosebumps from the cold, and I draw my robe closer. I think about Philip, lying asleep in my room. I think about myself, the person with Philip lying asleep in his room. I think about Freddy and Sam/Mark and Rob and the party and friends and work and this city and my life and my parents and this country in all of its splendid diversity and the dream that it inspires worldwide. I wonder if I’m lonely. I wonder if it matters.

I look off towards the end of my street. Oddly, there is no traffic on the Expressway. All is quiet and dark and still.

With a start, I notice that the twin smokestacks have vanished; there is no sign of them. No smoke, no glow, no structure. They are simply not there. Big sky replaces them, a void. It is silent, then, far, far away, I hear a thin siren, like a wailing. I rub my eyes and blink, but they are still gone. I wonder for a crazy moment if they were ever there. I listen to the tinny wail of the faraway siren, just this side of silence. A wave of sadness comes over me. There are ghosts somewhere nearby.

I hear a noise behind me, and I turn and jump. There is something inside, gliding towards the balcony. It flows closer, it is flowing and white.

It is Philip, wrapped in my sheet.

He struggles out onto the balcony. He opens the sheet, and he is naked. He pulls me to him and wraps the sheet around us both. At last, he kisses me.

Sirens are everywhere now, all around us, shrieking and wailing. There is a helicopter, I think, and there is traffic roaring on the Expressway. I feel the whole of him against me, and we are kissing on the balcony in Brooklyn.

For a moment, I pull my head back and look over his shoulder. The smokestacks are there, billowing, ghostly. Perhaps it was a trick of the light. Perhaps it was the drugs.

I think I might say something now, but I think the better of it, and return to the kiss.

As New York swarms to noisy life around us, we embrace, we kiss, we dance. We live.

We go inside and go to bed.

Steven Fucks A Republican

We were down South, in the state capital of, like, one of the Carolinas or Georgia or somewhere. We’d just been out in the Midwest for, like, ages, and I was glad to be somewhere a little bit more, I guess, distinct.

I was in the mood to celebrate, so I checked on-line and found a street that had a bunch of gay bars. It’s weird in these towns, because you’re never sure how people respond to their gay populations. Sometimes the bars are out and proud and right on the main drag. Sometimes they’re tucked away in a crappy part of town. You just don’t know. So I get a little map from the hotel desk, and just start walking.

The bars here were in the crappy part of town, and the distance was, I guess, longer than it appeared on the map, but I kept at it because now it was longer to get back to the hotel than to where I was going. Finally, I find the places. There’s like four of them, all in a row, with nothing much in the way of signs to distinguish them. Whatever, you’ve got to take it as it comes.

I go in to one, and it’s completely empty, except for a plump female bartender. I’m like “where’s the party?” and she’s like “They go from bar to bar. Try two doors down.” So I go two doors down, and there’s still not much to speak of in the way of a party, but at least there’s people. I get a beer and sit at the bar and start scoping it out and I get a little creeped out because it seems like it’s some kind of youth night or something. I mean it’s like these children, basically, dancing around and shrieking and not really knowing what they’re doing and it’s sort of sad, rather than uplifting.

So I’m thinking about trying one of the other two places when I see this guy sitting alone down at the end of the bar. He’s probably in his forties and he’s wearing a suit and tie which seems strange and he’s sort of dorky looking, like with a kind of moon face and little pinhole eyes and a Bill Gates kind of vibe, and he seems sort of I guess nervous. I figure he’s a married guy or something. Anyway, the kids are creeping me out, so I decide to talk to the dorky guy.

I go over and sit down next to him and I’m like “is everything okay?” because he’s looking so freaked out. And he’s looking around and he’s like “yeah, I’m fine” or whatever, and it’s sort of hard trying to have a conversation with him always looking over his shoulder. So now I’m really thinking about leaving when he says, “I’m sorry. It’s just that they are trying to out me.”

So that’s weird, so I’m like “who is?”

And he’s like “all the newspapers.”

So I say, “well, why would they do that?”

And he’s like “I work in politics.” And now I’m really intrigued and he says, “my constituents wouldn’t really approve, and I guess things are sort of conservative down here.” And I can tell that it’s sort of a delicate situation, so I don’t press, I just try to act neutral and see what else he lets slip. And he’s like, “do you want to go somewhere else?” And I say sure, because suddenly I feel like I’m in a movie or something, plus I’m sick of the screaming kids.

So we go down another door, and this seems to be the flagship club. It’s all done up with polished stone walls with fake palm trees and a waterfall. There’s a few more people in here, and they’re an older more professional looking crowd. We sit at a table and scope the place out.

He relaxes a bit, and talks about how he’s a Republican Senator and how hard it’s been for him, and blah-blah-blah. And it’s blowing my mind, really, but, I guess I always sort of expected stuff like this. You know, the sordid secret lives of the high and mighty Republicans, and it’s almost sort of too perfect.

Anyway, I’m not really attracted to him, but I hang out anyway because the whole thing’s sort of intriguing. And now he starts talking really graphically about all the boys who are, like aching to suck his cock and begging to be fucked and it’s weird, I guess A) because I could sense that it’s not really true at all, and that this is sort of him speaking his fantasy life out loud, and B) because it’s weird hearing these words coming from a Senator. Not that I’ve ever met one before.

So I’m not sure what I’m going to do here because I’m really not attracted to him, but I also feel this weird kind of sympathy for him, because I can tell that he wants to ask me home with him, but is having a hard time doing it, and just keeps going on in a graphic way about what the local boys are all desperate to do with him.

Finally, he’s in the middle of telling me about his work on the Bush campaign and something in me snaps and I say “do you want to get out of here?” And he’s up in a flash, and we have to kind of take a weird sneaky route through the parking lot, so no one will see him, I guess, and get in his car, which I notice is a really sleek, compact black BMW with government plates.

We start driving, and he’s telling me about the demographics of his constituency and like the economic makeup of the neighborhoods we drive through. And we get out of town a ways and roll into this big condo complex and drive into his garage. He takes me inside, and it’s big and sort of empty and, I guess sad in a way. Kind of a blank slate. There’s a couple pieces of nice furniture that look brand new, but also like they’d been ordered from a catalogue and like no one had ever sat on any of it. There’s a couple of pictures of him with his family, and with other politicians, some of whom I definitely recognized.

So now he seems at kind of a loss, and I’m starting to feel slightly like, I don’t know, a hooker or something. So I decide to go with it and I follow him into his bedroom which smells almost chemical, like new carpeting. And he goes into his bathroom to, I guess, “slip into something more comfortable,” and I suddenly feel all naughty, and take off all my clothes and get under the covers.

I guess with all of his talk back at the bar and the sort of desperation he was giving off, I thought he would be sort of kinky and crazy. So he comes back in, and sees me in bed, and gets in next to me in his pajamas, and I feel like some kind of 50s sitcom wife. So I start touching him, and he’s soft and sort of, like, spongy. Also, and I’m not passing judgment here because I’m certainly no giant, but his dick was sort of ludicrously small, like a peanut. Like small enough that I almost said something about it and had to catch myself. Like fascinatingly small. Whatever.

So he’s just kind of lying there, not helping me out at all, if you know what I mean. Now, I’m no gymnast, and I’m probably pretty vanilla when it comes to sex, but next to this guy, I feel like a porn star. So I go a little crazy and do as many things as I can think of to do with this, sort of inert Senator. And he doesn’t make a peep and doesn’t really move much and when I finally finish my, like, bizarre dance of desire, he gives me, like, a dainty little kiss on the cheek, and rolls over and starts snoring. Anyway, the whole thing had been sort of surreal, so I go to sleep too.

In the morning, he’s up and showered and dressed and is toasting muffins and he’s very much the Senator and he’s like “where do I take you? I’m late for an interview,” like nothing had happened. So I get dressed, and he drives me back to my hotel, dropping me off in the parking lot of the bank across the street, and he’s like “Thanks, bye,” and drives off, and I don’t even know if any of this even happened.

So I go up to my room, and the guy I was sharing the hotel room with was there, and I tell him what happened, and he’s like “that’s fucked,” and we watch some TV to kill some time before work. He’s flipping through the channels, and suddenly, there’s the Senator, on the steps of the State Capitol, talking about economic initiatives, and seeming like every single talking head you ever see on TV. And I get all excited because now I’ve got proof. Not like blackmail kind of proof, but proof that I wasn’t insane and that it had really happened.

Anyway, we go to work, and I crash hard in the hotel afterwards, and it’s on to the next city.

It’s weird to talk about, because you don’t really think of these things in terms of, I don’t know, love, or whatever. I guess this stuff is mainly anecdotal, sort of even as it’s happening. There’s a disconnect or something. If there’s love, it’s more of a human kind of love. A slice of life kind of love. Love of bodies and flesh and weird circumstances.

I don’t know, really. Maybe there’s no meaning in it, and it’s just sex. But when I think back on the Senator, I have a sort of fondness for the time we spent together. Other nights were just as weird, I guess. Like the time in New Mexico when I found myself in a hot tub snorting coke with a married construction worker from Boston and a fat Navajo.

But that’s a whole other can of worms.

Prospect Park

Justin stomped along Ninth Street toward the park. To anyone that watched him go, he would have seemed exceedingly annoyed with the world. And, funnily enough, he was. It was late in the summer, and blazingly hot, and his mother had kicked him out of their apartment for the afternoon.

“I need the place to myself, Justin. Please. Go to the park for a few hours and leave me alone, why don’t you?”

“I don’t want to. It’s hot out there.”

She was pouring herself a glass of wine now. “You can’t just sit there by the air conditioner in your underpants all day.”

“Why not?” Justin was indignant.

“Because it’s disgusting,” she said, sipping her wine. “Now go outside.”

“I hate the park. You know that. Bunch of psychos and retards. And why are you drinking wine so early?”

She lost her patience. “Justin. You are not to speak that way. And the wine is none of your business. Now get out!!”

“Fine. I will,” he said. “But I hate you, and I hate this shitty apartment!!” He stomped around getting dressed and yelling. When he left, he made extra sure to slam the door shut behind him.

Justin was angry a lot these days. He was fourteen and he had nobody to hang out with – he and his mother had just moved here to Park Slope, Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t agreeing with him. If it were up to him, he would have spent the rest of the day on the sofa, reading a book or writing in his journal. But his mom wasn’t having it; he banged his way down the two flights of stairs, past the row of mailboxes in the dank foyer, out into the superheated, slightly smelly Brooklyn air.

And off he went, walking east along Ninth Street towards Prospect Park. He passed the C-Town Supermarket with the tiny shopping carts and the narrow aisles. He passed the big old YMCA with its columns and statues and cornices. Cars and taxis and trucks and buses streamed noisily past. To his right, a compact row of identical Tudor-style brownstones stretched out of sight. To his left, he passed the Public Library, an agreeably spooky brick building shrouded by trees and surrounded by a long, ornate wrought-iron fence. Not for the first time, Justin imagined what it might be like to pop someone’s eyeball on one of the spikes atop that fence.

Lately, his mother was the number one candidate for eyeball popping. She had brought him here to Brooklyn, without really explaining what they were doing here. His dad had vanished without a trace when he was three. It had always been just him and his mom – the two of them, no matter what – and he was furious with her for not being honest with him.

Back at home just outside of Chicago, things had made sense for a while. There was a steady boyfriend for his mom who hadn’t sucked too badly; there had been a couple of kids who shared Justin’s tastes in books and video games. And then suddenly, without warning, the phone call and the move. It had all happened so fast that Justin barely knew where he was at all.

The phone call had come late one night. Justin was sitting up reading in his old bedroom. Or rather, he had been using a book to disguise the fact that he was listening attentively to what his mom and her boyfriend were getting themselves up to downstairs. He was becoming lulled by the boyfriend’s deep rumbling voice, and his mother’s laughter when the phone rang. Justin dropped his book to the floor and went to his bedroom door, pressing his ear against it.

Everything sounded far away and muffled, but he heard his mother’s voice become agitated as she spoke to whoever was calling. He heard the boyfriend’s voice speak up emphatically, then his mother shouted something at him. The boyfriend shouted back. Justin heard footsteps, and then the front door slammed. His mother became conciliatory and quiet with the telephone caller.

Justin raced to his window, and watched as his mother’s tall boyfriend slouched toward his car, got in it and drove off with a screech. It was the last time Justin had seen him.

Finally, Justin’s mother climbed the squeaky old stairs, and stuck her head in his bedroom door.

“Pack your things,” she said.

“What?”

“Pack your things,” she said again. “We’re leaving in the morning.”

“What? Where are we going??” Justin asked, quite rightly.

“Never mind that right now,” she said wearily. “I’ve got a lot to do. I need you to pack up your things. Put as much as you can into your suitcase and your boxes in the basement.” Without another word, she went into her own bedroom and shut the door. After a moment, Justin thought he heard her crying.

As he walked further towards the park, the trees became more manicured. More regularly spaced. The Tudor brownstones had now given way to low rows of elegant three story homes with rounded facades – and creepily identical in their construction – on either side of him. The effect was strange; each side of the street seemed to mirror the other. Every time Justin walked this block, he expected to see a mirror image of himself ambling along past the tiny little front gardens. If only he and his mom lived here instead of their crappy new apartment.

There was less traffic on the street, and he noticed that nobody was sitting on a stoop on this block. One little old lady stood motionless with a bright green garden hose, water dribbling from its nozzle onto a patch of purple pansies. She seemed barely alive. At the end of the block was an enormous mansion with curved columns and gargoyles and, past it, the park. He stomped along.

The morning after the phone call, and after staying up all night packing their belongings, a big yellow truck had come to take it all away. Justin and his mom, who hadn’t spoken a word to each other since the night before, got into a taxi – it was a station wagon with fake brown paneling on the side and a tiny man with thick glasses as a driver – then onto a plane at O’Hare airport. Some hours later, they got into another taxi at John F. Kennedy airport. This time, the driver was enormous, with a black beard and a saffron turban. At last, they arrived at their uneven little new apartment in Brooklyn.

Since they arrived and, try as he might, Justin couldn’t get his mother to tell him anything. She drank wine, and talked on the telephone in hushed tones, and sent Justin out for walks.

He arrived at the park. An enormous slab of concrete, carved with indecipherable numbers and figures, greeted him blandly. On a plinth in front of the slab, a dull green statue of the Marquis de Lafayette held up a laconic copper glove. Justin spat at him and kept walking.

Before him was a rolling downward hill, and more green than all the rest of Brooklyn had to offer. A bandshell to his right, barbecue pits to his left, and a curving path towards a copse of trees and some baseball diamonds ahead.

When he was younger, Justin was a student of the Narnia books – they were the first series he had ever completed – and he recognized the nooks and crannies and lampposts of this park as belonging both to smelly old Brooklyn, and to his own memories. Memories steeped in bedcovers, chocolate, and battered old Narnia paperbacks. This park was the only place he actually enjoyed in his new neighborhood. As he walked down the first green hill toward the first green pond, he felt some of his earlier anger dissipate.

He walked past some boys a few years younger than he was throwing around a tennis ball to catch in baseball gloves. He walked past a man and a woman whispering and giggling over a baby in a stroller. In the distance across the meadow, he saw a gang of Jamaican men playing soccer with great ferocity. He noticed two heavy set women whispering and giggling over a baby in a stroller.

He found himself a nice patch of moss beneath a big weepy tree, and sat down, enjoying the shade. People of every shape, size and color ambled past. Justin’s eyelids sank with the first pleasure he’d felt in weeks. Dogs barked and birds chirped.

Then;

“Wake up, boy!!”

Justin’s eyes snapped open. He looked around wildly, trying to find the source of the jangly voice.

“Lyin’ there like you ain’t got nothin’ to do. Open your eyes, boy!!”

He looked around wildly, seeing nothing.

Then, a boy about his age stepped out from the shade of the tree. The boy was skinny as a rail, and taller than Justin. His skin was so dark, it seemed lit from within, and his hair made an enormous halo around his head. He wore a blood red t-shirt which hung off him as if it was draped on a pile of sticks, and had an electric guitar slung over his bony shoulders. There was a light dusting of hair above his upper lip.

“Excuse me?” Justin squeaked.

“Excuse you? Shit. Ain’t no excuse for you. I seen you around. You just bein’ lazy. No time to waste, Justin.”

“How did you know my name?”

The boy laughed, throwing his head back, mouth open so wide it exposed a red throat and dangling uvula. After a moment he said, “Yeah. That’s good. How’d I know.”

Justin got annoyed. “Well, how did you know?”

The boy got serious, and stared at Justin with dark eyes. “That’s right. You get angry at me. You hang onto that anger. You gonna need it.”

“What?” Justin felt the prickle of sweat in his armpits and lower back.

“I say, you gonna need it.” The boy swung his guitar around his front into a playing position, and started plunking out a few jangly notes. “Yeah, you gonna need it. Boy, you here for a reason. It’s all over your face.”

Hotel Rooms

Joshua came out of the bathroom, tying an ankle-length silk bathrobe around his thin waist. He walked past the crumpled body splayed face down in the hallway, and snatched up the pack of cigarettes from the end table next to the bed. He lit a cigarette. It was both unfiltered and not his brand. With a shudder, he dragged on it, pulled his robe closer around himself, and exhaled a blue plume in the direction of the inert fuck head in the hallway.

He sat on the polyester hotel bedspread, leafy, gold and green, and looked out the window at a well-lit and empty stretch of Interstate. He stared. Besides the Interstate, there was nothing. There may have been trees or houses or people, but all he saw was an empty stretch of road. The light was both orange and yellow. All was silent. An enormous semi roared past, then was gone. Nothing followed it, and he stared for another moment at the nothing that followed.

It was a king size bed, larger than his last bed, and he enjoyed its size most by taking up as little space on it as possible. For the string of hotel rooms he’d called home, he felt most at home in them when they were as pristine as possible. Sometimes, when he was alone, he actually slept on the floors of his hotel rooms, the beds perpetually made, the cards and mints undisturbed on the pillow, his duffel for a pillow, and one precious little pure white towel from the bathroom for a blanket.

There was a groan from the hallway.

“Shut the fuck up,” Joshua muttered.

The groan ended, and nothing followed it.

Joshua stood and, with a swirl of robe, crossed to the low glass table by the window. On the table was a vial full of little white pills and an ice bucket. In the ice bucket was ice, and a screw-top bottle of blueberry wine – the only wine for sale at the gas station across from the hotel. It was half empty. Ignoring the two soiled glasses beside the bucket, he flipped the stiff paper cap off the top of a fresh glass with his pinky. He poured some wine for himself. The glass had little raised bumps on its bottom.

He raised his glass in a toast towards the hall.

“Stupid fucker,” he said. He laughed to himself, which made him cough. He drank down the glass of wine, which was disgusting. With some force, he set down his bumpy glass on the low glass table, startling himself with the noise. “Stupid fucker,” he said again.

Joshua noticed the man’s jeans lying on the floor next to the big bed. He nudged them with a bare toe, as if they might leap up and retaliate. They didn’t. He squatted beside them.

In the back pocket was a wallet. It was the sort of overstuffed wallet that Joshua despised – the sort that barely folded for being so full, and ruined the back pockets of every pair of pants it was crammed into. It made him hate the man all over again. With his thumb and index finger, Joshua removed the wallet from the pocket and laid it on a corner of the bed. He poked at it, then opened it.

The edge of a photograph stuck out from behind all of the useless receipts and business cards and shopping lists. He pulled the photo out and had a look. It was the man. He was standing in front of a barn with a washed out looking woman and a little boy. The boy was wearing a Batman costume and holding a frog. For all intents and purposes, they looked like a family.

Joshua noticed a stack of fifties, perhaps a thousand dollars’ worth. There were several credit cards. A driver’s license. A military ID – the man was a marine!! He saw a little blue corner beneath a side pocket. He tugged on it and pulled out the man’s Social Security card. His head started to spin a little bit.

The man had a family. Several lines of credit. A thousand dollars cash in hand. A barn. An identity.

He went back for another glass of the sickly sweet wine. What to do? Joshua thought to himself. He downed his wine. What to do?

He was tired of hotel rooms.

Joshua untied his robe and let it slide to the floor. He stood naked before the window overlooking the Interstate, and stared at the little piles of paper on the bed. With those little papers he could – what? What could he do? The wine and the pills and the man and the nakedness and the possibility swam around in his head. Joshua had an erection.

He went back to the bed. He picked up the man’s jeans and held them up. They were too big for him. He sat on the bed, and pulled the baggy jeans up around his waist, his hard-on tenting the front of them. He flopped down onto the bed. He took the stack of fifties out of the wallet. They were crisp and new and smelled delicious. He fanned them out, then spread them across his chest, massaging himself with the man’s money. He took the man’s driver’s license, and stared into his grainy photo – he licked the photo, and writhed on the bed. He took the photo of the man’s family, and pressed it against himself.

Sex with the man’s identity was better than sex with the man himself, Joshua decided as his hands slid beneath the waistband of the too-big jeans, and he closed his eyes.

Suddenly, a large pair of hands closed around his throat. Joshua opened his eyes to the bleary, drugged face of the man himself.

“What the fuck?” the man growled. “Did you drug me, you stupid fucking whore?”

Joshua tried to speak, but found that he couldn’t.

Mercifully, the man took one hand off of his throat. Unmercifully, that hand clenched into a fist and landed with a crunch on Joshua’s nose and then again on his left eye, which instantly swelled shut.

Joshua tried again to speak, but only burbled.

“Shut the fuck up,” the man said, administering another punch to Joshua’s now bloody face. “You fucked with the wrong dude, dude,” he said, somewhat repetitively, Joshua thought.

Joshua felt himself seized roughly by the shoulders, and flipped onto his stomach, his head pressed roughly against the polyester bedspread. He felt the man yank his baggy jeans down off of Joshua’s waist – they caught on his heel, and when they were yanked again, Joshua felt a snap and a fresh bloom of pain in his ankle. He whimpered.

“Quiet,” the man said as he climbed on top of Joshua, and landed a punch to the side of his head. “Fucking bitch.”

The leafy gold and green bedspread was the last thing Joshua saw as the man began to thrust and fresh waves of pain came over him and his vision blurred and he blacked out.

Out on the Interstate, a semi roared by. The driver looked over at the little hotel in the middle of nowhere, and glanced up toward Joshua’s room. His was the only window lit in a sea of darkness. The semi roared past. Nothing followed. All was silent.