I Hate Everyone, Except You(48)

After an excruciating ride on the bus, Clayton rang the buzzer to Isabel’s apartment and she came downstairs a few minutes later wearing a baggy shift dress and flat sandals. Because of its lack of shape and large yellow floral print, the dress seemed to him something a mother of three would wear to a daytime wedding near the beach. She must have noticed the look of consternation on his face because she announced quite loudly on Tenth Avenue, “I’ve gained so much weight that I’ve resorted to wearing frocks!”

Something about the way she said frocks struck him as vulgar—and to be speaking so loudly about one’s weight in public. Granted, she was about five feet tall and a size 8, a bit plumper than most women her age living in Manhattan in 1994. He wanted so much to go home, to go anywhere actually, to relieve himself of this obligation. But he had committed himself to showing her around town. He could feign a headache or emergency, but she would be able to detect the lie, wouldn’t she? Then she would go back to her apartment, feeling rejected and alone. He couldn’t do that to her.

As they walked and made small talk about her neighborhood (noisy!) and the weather (hot!), they found themselves at a subway entrance. Clayton suggested they take it downtown, but Isabel protested. “No!” she exclaimed. “I can’t ride the subway.”

Assuming she was afraid, he tried to assuage her fear. “It’s really not so bad,” he said, “especially at this time of day.”

“No. It just won’t do. We’ll take a taxi. I’ll pay.” He reluctantly obliged, though it would take twice as long, which meant he would have to engage in more conversation without the benefit of alcohol or the distraction of strangers.

Once in Soho, they settled on a large bar offering flights of wine: six small glasses per order, served on paper placemats printed with boxes in which one could jot down notes like “citrusy” or “oaky” or “hints of quince.” They discussed their respective bosses. Hers was a family friend who’d needed an executive assistant, while his was a nouveau riche type he nicknamed The Gucc (pronounced “gooch”) because of her apparent uniform of Gucci loafers. Clayton decided after two flights of wine each that Isabel was not so terrible, but around eleven o’clock he suggested they call it a night; he didn’t know of any parties and wasn’t sure he wanted to bring her to one anyway. Then Isabel asked, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

He found the question absurd. “God, no,” he said with a nervous laugh.

“So . . . do you have a boyfriend?”

This chick is ballsy, he thought. “Not at the moment,” he said, “no.”

“So, you’re gay.”

“I thought that was pretty obvious.” Clayton signaled the bartender for the check.

“I’m not like most women,” she said.

“How so?” he asked.

“I can just have sex and not expect anything else.”

“Good for you.” Clayton was starting to get very uncomfortable. He reached into his pocket and pulled out eighty dollars. “I think that should cover it.”

“Do you want to have sex with me?” she asked.

He thought about it for a moment. “Not really.”

“Have you ever had sex with a woman before?”

“Sort of, almost, in high school,” he said. “But my parents interrupted—they came home from a party early—and I just figured, eh, it wasn’t meant to be.”

“But aren’t you curious?”

Clayton had been asked this question about one hundred times since coming out of the closet. He was curious about a lot of stuff, he would say, like whether drowning was a painless way to die or if he could outrun a raccoon should the need arise, but that didn’t mean he wanted to do any of those things. “Not really,” he told Isabel. “I have to work in the morning, so I think we should go.”

They left the bar, and Clayton hailed a cab. When it pulled up to the curb in front of them, he opened the door for Isabel and kissed her on the cheek, the way one would say good-bye to a new friend. “Aren’t you getting in?” she asked.

He explained that he would take the 6 train from Spring Street.

“Oh, come on, share a cab with me,” she said. “I’ll pay.”

She hadn’t even offered to split the bar tab, so he decided to take her up on the offer. He climbed into the taxi and closed the door behind him. “We’ll be making two stops,” he told the driver. “One on Sixty-First and First and then over on Fifty-Fifth and Tenth.”

Before they had even crossed Houston Street, though, Isabel had wriggled out of her panties, straddled him, and stuck her tongue in Clayton’s mouth. “Oh, fuck it,” he told the cab driver, “just make one stop on Fifty-Fifth and Tenth.” He couldn’t turn down such a direct offer of sex, from a woman no less! She must have sensed something in him, which he had not sensed in himself. Maybe some kind of pheromone.

As he followed the giant-flowered frock up three flights of stairs to its owner’s apartment, Clayton wondered at how he had gotten himself into this situation—and how he could get out of it. Was he really going to have sex with a member of the opposite sex, just because she was expecting it? Or was that what she was expecting at all? Maybe she just wanted to make out for a while, he told himself. He did that all the time in college. But why would she remove her panties?