Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me(18)

“And you made it.”

“I did.”

“Here you are.”

“Here I am.”

He left to do a set on the go-go box. Later, when he took another break, Vinnie came and found me, and we picked up where we’d left off. First, though, he felt obliged to tell me, “I have a boyfriend.”

“As do I, and he knows I’m here. It’s all good.”

“Actually,” he corrected himself, “two. I have two boyfriends, a couple, and I am their boy. See?” He showed me the dog tag around his neck, engraved with both their names.

I could not imagine such an arrangement working well, but who knows? “That’s fantastic,” I said, “tell me about it.”

And so he did. The go-go boy with the glorious body told me all about his boyfriends and his belief in polyamorous relationships, but there was something troubling him. “We had a fight yesterday—”

“—That happens, bound to happen.”

“No, this was a big fight. And, maybe because tomorrow is Father’s Day, it’s really worrying me. I mean, these two—they’re sort of like my dads; my parents did nothing for me—and they help … give me direction.”

I nodded, thinking about how Steve and I used to have blowouts once or twice a year, usually over something minor—“cleaning out the pipes,” I used to call it—and even O and I squabble occasionally. I pulled Vinnie in close and hugged him: “It’s going to be okay,” I said into his ear, just making myself heard above the disco music, “I promise.” I held him for what seemed like a long time. I had no awareness of people watching us, if they were. Finally, I let him go. I stuffed a twenty-dollar bill into his jockstrap.

“Go,” I said to the go-go boy, “dance.” And I headed home.





Oliver’s Desk




4-22-12: O, tidying his desk:

“I specialize in a very large number of a very few things—magnifying glasses, spectacle cases, shoehorns, rubber bands …”

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Undated Note—April 2012:

I found O standing at the piano, where he was taping together pieces of sheet music, enlarged on the copy machine so he can read them. I watched him silently as he narrated while he worked. It was all very, very, very complicated of course. He had fourteen sheets and was “very puzzled” about what had happened to sheet #12 or why sheet #8 was slightly smaller than sheet #9: “Oh, oh, oh,” he said very seriously, “I think we have a problem …” He was thinking it all the way through, and envisioning the worst.

I watched as he tried to snip an uneven edge off one sheet; because of his blindness, he was missing it entirely, scissoring the air very, very gently, and there was something so touching about this—the care with which he was doing it; I know he felt that he must be very delicate with the paper, with the music, must not hurt it. After a bit, I gently moved his hand, so that he cut the paper as he wished. He said thank you.

From there, he, with my help—“Would you mind, please, putting your finger there? No, not there! There.”—began Scotch-taping them together on his long table. One after the other, after the other, each “hinged” with a piece of tape, then taped again from behind. Occasionally, he would get distracted and start talking about something entirely different. He noticed that the blinds were uneven and asked if I would even them out (like cheese or pieces of scrap paper, everything had to be symmetrical in his world).

I reached to do so, but he stopped me with a cry, “Take heed of the ferns!”

“‘Take heed’? Who talks like that?” I teased. “Queen Victoria?”

He laughed hard, as he rushed to protect his “little darlings” from me. They were just barely new, on the sill to get some sun. (Later he would explain exactly how they reproduce—the eggs and the sperm, as if I were in a sex-ed class from the nineteenth century.) Finally, we were done with the sheet music. He asked me to fold it up—“like an accordion”—and then he began playing. It was one of Schubert’s songs. And he played it all the way through, from left to right—I unfolding it at his comically barked commands: “Now!” “Now!”—and he played it well, and it was lovely.

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5-17-12:

A balmy night; taking a walk through the playground on Horatio St.; seeing girls playing four-square, and boys shooting hoops, one of whom is particularly striking—tall and lithe and tanned, shirtless. He runs, dribbling, and dunks a basket, then immediately steps onto a skateboard and from there glides across the entire playground in a gentle arc, perfectly balanced, all the while reading texts on his phone.

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6-4-12: On the street: A woman dressed—and completely covered—in black. She wears a pair of sunglasses. For some reason, I turn to see her from behind. She has a second pair of sunglasses on the back of her head.

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From my window: the triangle park, and the oblong traffic divider with two trees. I see a couple standing at the tip of the divider. Not young—maybe forties? She wears a long summer dress and is blonde. He is bald and has one hand on her ass. He pulls her in close and kisses her. They came out there to catch a cab but end up making out in the middle of traffic instead. So sexy. Finally, he flags down a cab. They are going back to his place, I imagine, to fuck.